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Actually, I was one of the people who worked on zipi, so I'm very familiar with it and reasons why it was developed. Zipi is dead, so don't expect it anytime soon. There was a reasonable movement behind it a few years ago. One of the key developers of zipi was CNMAT, or the Center for New Music and Audio Technology at UC Berkeley. One of CNMAT's key areas of research is in musical performance and control. They are still heavily involved in this, and I beleive have developed a new musical description language, a successor to the MDL used for zipi. There is information about this on CNMATs web page. The point behind these efforts is that midi is a very slow and inefficient control network and communication protocol. It was developed in the early 80's just for the purpose of communicating between a simple keyboard and a simple synth. It is terrible for handling just about any other application. Rapid parameter updates, which are very useful on modern algorithmic synths (physical modeling, resynthesis, etc), are impossible with midi. Accurate synchronization, polyphony, etc. are all screwed up by midi, and it has been well recognized for years that midi is the biggest impediment to further advances in instrument technology. It is also the primary reason why guitar synths always suck. When the controller and the synth/effect have 100's of MIPs available, and they communicate over a 31kbs channel, you have a big problem! As we discovered with zipi, and as Greg just demonstrated for us, making these changes from within the music industry is very hard. The industry is very slow and not willing to take risks, and usually not very up to date on current technology trends. Fortunately, I guess, we have microsoft. Microsoft is dictating as part of the PC '98 specification that all PC's from here on out have only USB and Firewire (IEEE1394) interfaces. This means that you will not have midi ports grafted on the joystick connector anymore, or hacked into a serial port or whatever. Midi control data will be communicated over firewire or USB. These peripheral networks will also be used for transmitting audio and video, so all of these things can easily be lumped together in one wire. What this means is that Mr Gates is turning the dodgy old midi physical interface into the dinosaur it should have become some time ago, and the music industry will evolve or die with it. You can expect to see manufacturers replacing the relatively expensive midi connectors/uarts with cheap firewire interfaces in the next few years. Networking these devices together and connecting them to your pc will be a simple task. And with bandwidth at 400MB/s, you will be able to send multiple audio channels along with any performance control info. Almost certainly there will be someone making firewire to midi convertors so that the pc of the future can still talk to the synth of the past. Obviously, that makes a midi only device much less attractive to the average consumer. The AES does indeed have working groups determining specifications for how to communicate audio and midi over firewire. I don't know the state of that, but I beleive reports have been published. And when all you are left with is the terrible musical description language of midi, and none of the slow hardware it was designed for, you have to wonder what the point of keeping even that is. Changing it now really just becomes a question of changing low level drivers in software. So the opportunity for CNMAT or someone else to introduce a new description language for modern network technologies is quite real. All they really need to do is get Microsoft to like it, and the what the rest of the music industry thinks is not very important. kim At 12:17 PM -0400 10/22/97, Mark Kata wrote: >I saw an article about ZIPI in Computer Music Journal a couple of years >ago. It was developed by Zeta Systems. I don't remember anything about >it either, but I remember being impressed by its capabilities. > >Hey you customer reps at Oberheim, Boomerang and Lexicon: Do you know >anything about the demise of MIDI or the introduction of ZIPI? > >Mark Kata >Mark@asisoftware.com > >---------- >From: Matt McCabe[SMTP:mattm@bi-tech.com] >Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 1997 11:51 AM >To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com >Subject: Re: Demise of MIDI? > >> From: Mark Kataby way of Kim Flint <Mark@asisoftware.com> > >> I just read a very strange post in Digital Guitar Digest. It mentioned >the >> impending demise of MIDI. > >About 2 years ago, I read some discussions on this topic. I believe the >"replacement" is called ZIPI (or something like that). It mainly corrects >many of the shortcomings of MIDI....like speed. I think it was designed >by a manufacturer of guitar synths. > >Obviously I really don't remember that much about it. Sorry. > >Matt ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@annihilist.com | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html http://www.annihilist.com/ | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com