Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

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The fact that MIDI 2.0 was only released in 2020 is mind boggling. It was just really well designed and implemented from the beginning.

I remember the first time I saw MIDI in action: I was in a mall in the mid-to-late 1980s and ComputerLand had a full sized keyboard hooked up to an Apple IIgs, which was playing The Entertainer while the notes scrolled across the screen on a color display. The real piano sound that came out was piped through some great speakers and I thought it was the most amazing technology I had ever seen. Think about that for a second: That tech remained almost untouched for 35 years. Incredible.

This video has a short bit in the middle about one of the first MIDI keyboards which still works with modern equipment (starting at 7:55): The History of the Prophet Synthesizer https://youtu.be/Ruh0B5QKBMs?t=476

And for fun: 1986: MIDI and the MUSICAL MICROS | BBC Archive: https://youtu.be/aADkqmvy44o

Related (non-MIDI) note: I recently found this video about making electronic dance music on an Amiga in the early 1990s and learned quite a lot about how music-techies back then we're geeking out. Super fun - I'm not a musician, so I honestly had no real idea what was possible back then.

https://youtu.be/6OaBkvwx7Hw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDn7ZDcx9w0 is great (in the same vein).

No-one uses MIDI 2.0 yet, we don’t need it! MPE (https://www.midi.org/midi-articles/midi-polyphonic-expressio...) is only just being adopted (with poly aftertouch instruments and keybeds like the ones in the ASM Hydrasynth).

MIDI has proved amazingly resilient, whether over 5-pin DIN, the increasingly common TRS 1/4” jacks (common on Eurorack or guitar pedals, where space is a premium) or the utterly ubiquitous MIDI over USB. (And ethernet, can’t forget that). Everything digitally controlled speaks MIDI - and not just music, the stage lighting world is all MIDI too. I think that there is a real case that it’s the second most successful wired physical-layer protocol behind Ethernet.

A good number of stage lighting controllers have the ability to interface with and handle MIDI, but the vast majority of stage lighting equipment is controlled using DMX[1]. The two have a lot in common, being pretty much ubiquitous and rock-solid even given their age.

[1] - http://www.dmx-512.com/dmx-protocol/dmx-protocol-basics/

I think it’s likely they were confused also by the physical connector - DMX can and often does use the same 5 pin connector as MIDI, if I’m not mistaken.

Nah, I was just wrong :-) I know a lot of big touring productions drive lighting and patch changes off the same clock (usually a laptop which provides time code, possibly backing tracks, and possibly patch changes for effects and synths), and misremembered that lighting typically used a different protocol even if it’s the same program driving everything.

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