[sdiy] New MIDI (was free AS3320, AS3340, AS3310 and AS3360 samples)

[Ben Bradley]

The MIDI confusion has only increased over the decades, as the 5-pin
DIN connector seems to be less common than USB now.  At least the
DIN-connector MIDI has (mostly) consistent latency (three 7-bit bytes
per note, or with running status two bytes per note), but with USB
you're also relying on a computer with a non-real-time OS, and the
only thing close to a saving grace is that these computers are so fast
that it ALMOST doesn't matter that the OS is not real time. It's the
same thing as with recording/playing audio or video - for MIDI the
bandwidth is a lot less, but the timing issues are still about as
stringent. I grasp the original MIDI spec just fine ever since it was
published in Polyphony, but I've had trouble getting a USB-to-MIDI box
running.

A MIDI replacement should absolutely have a timestamp for each event
(perhaps something like MIDI File Format), and the implication is that
the timestamp should be generated by a dedicated device rather than in
a general-purpose non-real-time OS. I'm sure (well I certainly hope)
people have already specified such things in any newly proposed
protocol.