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

[Richard Wentk]

On 25 Mar 2008, at 23:19, Jason Proctor wrote:

> on a similar note... what happened to mLan?

You could just as well ask - what happened to MIDI?

5-pin DIN MIDI is last century's protocol. It's a legacy system. More  
and more people are using USB controllers and softsynths, and the  
days of stacks of big discrete keyboards are coming to an end.

Currently we're in a transition stage, where CPU cycles are still  
catching up with people's needs. But a quadcore system overclocked to  
4GHz offers some hefty synth ability and speeds will have increased  
to 8GHz on four or eight cores within a few years.

I can already run up to eight softsynths at once on my rather old AMD  
PC. With a faster machine I'd be able to run them at 88.2k. With a  
much faster machine I'd be able to do that and double the number too.

Who needs more than 16 softsynths at once? How many people have ever  
owned sixteen separate keyboard synths?

> can we assume, that given that ethernet and Firewire have  
> effectively not made any penetration into the MIDI & USB market,  
> that high bandwidth broadband isn't regarded as necessary for  
> control purposes?

Firewire is widely used for audio interfaces - more so than USB,  
which isn't as reliable and can't offer the bandwidth.

I have an M-Audio interface which includes stereo I/O and a pair of  
MIDI ports over F400. It's not an unusual product in any way.

Richard