[sdiy] MIDI over Ethernet (was Microchip DSP kit $60 > AVR32)

[Neil Johnson]

Hi,

On 22 Mar 2008, at 15:13, Tom Wiltshire wrote:
> On 22 Mar 2008, at 15:00, Jim Patchell wrote:
>
>> The new XMega AVR is also looking very promising.  It will have  
>> the ability to do a lot of things in hardware ( DMA, Event  
>> Routing) that will help a lot in increasing the amount of work the  
>> processor can do...plus the 32MIPs processing speed.
>>
>> There are other free tools available for the AVR such as  
>> Ethernut.  It is a combination RTOS/TCP-IP Stack that works really  
>> nice.  I am in the process of writing a server (running on Windoz)  
>> and client (running on an Ethernut board) that will do MIDI over  
>> Ethernet.
>
> Sounds interesting, Jim, but I've got to ask "Why?"
> I thought everyone was moving from 'traditional' MIDI via the old  
> DIN plugs to MIDI over USB? What's the advantage of ethernet as a  
> connection, particularly if it's non-standard?
>
> Please don't think I'm trying to knock it. I'd just like to  
> understand your thinking.

One other aspect that I haven't yet seen mentioned is that Ethernet,  
like MIDI, has electrical isolation on inputs - opto-isolator for  
MIDI, transformer for Ethernet.  Even with Power-over-Ethernet you  
still maintain the isolation between input and device via the  
switcher magnetics.  Ethernet also adds isolation on the output as  
well just for completeness.

Unless you spend $$$ on special boxes you don't get isolation on USB,  
so ground loops and noise-sharing via common grounds start to be a  
problem again.

Neil
--
http://www.njohnson.co.uk