[sdiy] MIDI isn't musical : Flame bait?

[Florian Anwander]

Hi Colin 

> I've done tests like these before.
> It lead me to the conclusion that I should build my own sequencer and
> never use a PC for sequencing music.
>[...] I don't feel MIDI causes a problem.
This has nothing to do with the PC; it is the delay caused bye the duration
of the three byte info for the second note. It IS definitely the serial
tranport of MIDI, which causes the delay (we measured the Delay between the
two ports of the MIDI/CV-Interfaces, which react on the same note; it was
neglectable in comparison to MIDI).


I know a guy, who built in the late seventies a parallelport
CV/Gate-interface for an old Commodore PET, and wrote a sequencer program
for it. The basic trick was, that his quantizing did a kind of masterclock
like in the TR-808. Perfect timing.

> This is a time-stamping system where data is sent from the PC to the
> midi interface in advance, and clocked out of the interface with midi
> byte length timing accuracy. The difference is very obvious.
This would be the real solution, if we hade an output for each voice, but
one synth always will have one MIDI port, which means 54 ms difference
between the first and the last note for a six note chord.


> I would still like to do away with MIDI entirely, but it just isn't
> practical.
> And ignoring heavily quantised machine music (which is mostly what I do,
> but...), I don't believe anyone ever had their performance affected by
> using a MIDI keyboard to play a synth live, rather than playing the
> keyboard direct. Which was Don's original basis for branding MIDI
> 'unmusical'.
This is of course right.

Florian
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