FW: music networking - ZIPI and OSCP (was RE: new HW/SW trend?)

["Michael LaMeyer" <m.lameyer@verizon.net>]

Sorry about that reply thing Chris ...

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Muir [mailto:cbm@well.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 12:08 AM
To: m.lameyer@verizon.net
Subject: Re: music networking - ZIPI and OSCP (was RE: new HW/SW trend?)


At 3:39 PM -0500 1/21/03, Michael LaMeyer wrote:
[re: ZIPI and OSCP]
>Implementing this protocol would require manufacturers to broadly accept
>this as a standard and essentially abondon MIDI altogether, if I'm not
>mistaken.  Seems unlikely given the immense investment everyone's already
>put into MIDI.  mLAN is essentially an attempt to get around some
>limitations with MIDI without asking everyone and their mother to toss 
>MIDI
>out the window.  Alas, I wish we would. ;-)

Much of the discussion regarding MIDI gets muddied because no distinction 
is
made between transport layer issues (e.g. MIDI is slow) and the music
description language (e.g. MIDI's note on message locks together three
parameters that should be separate: time, pitch and loudness). For example,
in the MMA (MIDI Manufacturers Association) there is a Transport Layer
Working Group, that deals with sending MIDI messages over other transports
(e.g. USB, Ethernet, Firewire).

While transport layer problems do need addressing, the hard problem is in
addressing the deficiencies of MIDIs music description.

At the time of ZIPI's introduction the MMA's response to ZIPI was something
along the lines of "How do we deal with the ZIPI threat?". At this point in
time I feel that the MMA is mature enough to embrace any serious effort to
improve it.

There is a new effort underway, OpenMuse, to discuss and create solutions 
to
both these problems. I'm hoping that a community builds around OpenMuse. 
The
website is still pretty vacant, but more information is on its way
<http://openmuse.org/>

Chris

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