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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Seconded, web midi is a big showstopper for Mozilla and should have more priority than the various bells and whistles that Mozilla does seem to prioritize but that ultimately are not part of a browser.

Not being able to use Midi from FireFox means that for a whole raft of possible applications Chrome is the only option, which is a real pity.

Please, please, pretty please, give web midi a higher priority.

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The use of the phrase "bells and whistles" seems pretty ironic here.

When you think of the web as a platform to be used for audio applications, it seems like a reasonable feature

The thing is that "the web" doesn't make sense as a platform for audio applications when to build upon it you need to throw away realtime safe subroutines.

Realtime audio rendering is a soft realtime problem. If the web audio APIs don't have methods for guaranteeing deadlines for rendering audio, it's only possible to build toy audio applications.

I'm aware of things like bandlab and such. They're still toys and too limited for serious work, where the money is.

Curious, what applications need web midi?

Just one example:

https://sightreading.training/

wow that's a pretty cool app

Most music-related applications wanting to offer generic hardware support and hackability. Midi is an amazing standard. It allows you to hook up a synthesizer from the early 80s to your 2020 laptop (via a midi-capable audio interface) and control almost anything in your modern DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). And if your Web browser has support for it, control a software synth or any application as well.

In addition to just musical instruments, a huge number of different hardware still use midi. I'm personally interested in DJ-world where things like DJ- and light-controllers use midi and therefore are very easily remappable and very hackable (if the sw is built correctly).

I've wanted to build some DJ-related sw myself that would work via browser but the fact that currently only Chrome supports the standard has so far kept me off it. I'd very much like to see Firefox supporting Web midi.

Right, I understand what MIDI is for, but usually music software has these real-time requirements on performance and the browser runs javascript, so... What are the applications for web midi? People aren't mixing their music on the browser nowadays, right?

You could have a whole DAW in the browser. There are already some web based synths

I haven't seen significant problems from javascript being too slow on things that use web MIDI. Here is a web based "piano karaoke" app that runs quite well in browsers that support MIDI (and since it syncs with YouTube videos, it really kind of has to run in a browser vs native)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV6rdmdZnkA

Get in touch if you want to beta test it and let me know if you think it is fast enough on your set up, etc. Hoping to put it on "Show HN" soon. rjbrown at gmail More about it at https://pianop.ly/portfolio/

Just to throw out an example from a friend's company: online piano lessons. MIDI input in the browser makes it possible for them to tell if you played the correct notes on your keyboard.

If it was WebMIDI that actually transmitted -MIDI streams- (instead of just shoving them, with limited options, at some flaccid GM soundfile) that'd be really cool. Then you could choose your own MIDI playback engine (application, external hardware, ... ).

In an environment that interprets -all- the codes, MIDI's almost unlimited. Hollywood's used it for a long time. It's very undemanding so people could -certainly- mix their music on the (right) browser. And, if people could add javascript routines to it? Ay-yay.

Mine, for one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV6rdmdZnkA

(piano karaoke that overlays and syncs with youtube videos)

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