Midi 2.0

Completely agree.

One particular manufacturer must have already realised their own potential in this context: ASM. It would be sufficient for them to add MIDI 2.0 support to their existing Hydrasynth line to fill the controller gap more competently than many others - if they wanted to. Naturally, it also depends on the resolution of the sensors in their hardware but already those endless macro encoders with the little screens seem to be pretty fit for the game.

Expressive E has hinted at the possibility of implementing MIDI 2.0 in their Osmose, should the former become more relevant. Right now, they will certainly focus on stabilising their newly conquered market position rather than implementing a new feature. A MIDI 2.0 upgrade for their Touché would however allow them to step in at a minimal cost.

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Honestly, I think one of the big impacts is going to be when the Electra One mk2 gets midi 2.0 compatibility. It’s a small team, but that will mean you’ve suddenly got a small, relatively cheap tool that can control any 2.0 module or vst, without needing the money or space investment of a master keyboard, and can take in your existing controllers and route them in a smart way. It’s also got the display needed to show parameter names etc dynamically, which is basically a requirement for automatic mappings — something like the miditwister just doesn’t cut it.

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I commented over in the NAMM 2024 thread on what we may see from Expressive E with Osmose in the short term, and specifically with MIDI 2.0.

I think the problem with adding MIDI 2.0 to Osmose has to do with the limits of the controls sitting next to the keybed. They may add MIDI 2.0 to Osmose but as a full controller it won’t ultimately be competitive. They, or someone they designate will need to create new hardware that incorporates that keybed, to be the robust MIDI 2.0 controller we will need for the various HW and SW MIDI 2.0 synths.

The same need is less necessary for the two ( three ? ) keyboard Hydrasynths, because of the other controls that they have. I know that Glen Darcey has mentioned the challenges of doing MIDI 2.0. But even at that there is more possible / needed.

The Keystage makes a stab at that with the ASM / Medeli keybed. Their arp and chord features are quite good, plus the DAW interface. Maybe Korg can follow up with the hardware improvements to make it even better.

The new Native Instruments Mk3’s hardware has the capabilities. I just wonder if NI does ?

There is definitely room for other competitive controllers, with a full set of controls, with a built in arp, sequencer, chord function, and perhaps CV too. Something that could sit as a single controller to a variety of synths.

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I am also looking for a nice MIDI 2.0 to CV interface where you can enter properties depending with how it is patched into a modular system.

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Osmose is all about bringing control back to your fingers, allowing tactile expression to happen while you’re playing. Closing the 2.0 MIDI gap will enable Osmose to communicate and to interact with a larger set of potentially expressive sound sources at a higher resolution than MIDI 1.0/MPE.

Multi-dimensional expressive playing beyond polyAT is nevertheless an acquired skill and not to everyone’s musical taste. That’s why the common MIDI controller with more limited expressive dimensions will prevail, for now. The Osmose will not compete in this area, indeed. I could see the Hydrasynth competing wonderfully here, in particular because of its well-established user base.

The Hydrasynth in MPE has both directions.

With keyboard synths there is the potentials for MIDI 2.0 for both directions.

Haken is very good in MPE. I wonder about MIDI 2.0 going forward for them. ( This applies to the Osmose synth part too. )

Does anyone who has used midi 2.0 know how it handles connecting a midi keyboard to a hardware synth? With USB midi 1.0 there is a whole mess of worrying about USB device and host. With midi 1.0 I can just use a din cable, but I don’t think midi 2.0 can go over a din cable. It really should just be an easy USB C to USB C connection, without worrying about host and device and stuff.

I love midi, but I don’t love DAWs, so I use a lot of hardware midi stuff, like elektron devices. I really hope that all the benefits of midi 2.0 aren’t limited to hardware talking directly with computers, and hardware can still talk to each other without needing a computer. It seems like it should be possible if everything got a USB C port in the future.

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The MIDI 2.0 standard is entirely agnostic relative the physical layer of communication.

Good question though.

I guess this just seems like a very standard use of MIDI (and in fact the original use) and I have yet to see anyone talking about how midi 2.0 is intended to be used between non computer devices. Like I figure someone designing the midi spec has thought about this and has at least a suggestion for how it should work.

Like if I am designing a synth right now and want it to be maximally forward compatible, what ports do I put on it and what capabilities do they need to have if I want my synth to work really nice with midi 2.0?

You put midi din or trs ports on it, plus USB. Add long as you have bidirectional communication between the devices, you can do negotiate midi 2.0 if both devices support it. I believe midi 2.0 supports a higher speed over DIN cables (I should go reread the spec), so you may want the serial ports behind your midi controllers to support that faster data rate, not just the standard midi speed, but on most microcontrollers that you’re likely to be using for the implementation, they already will support this. If you’re only doing midi over USB, you don’t really need to support USB 3, because it’s very unlikely that we’ll see USB interfaces drop support for USB 2 any time soon. That said, you probably want USB C connectors, and per the standard, that means you should support USB 3, although this is widely violated, so not really a big deal.

That’s it. It’s really just software.

Selfishly, I’d love to see more hardware with Ethernet ports supporting midi rtp and power over Ethernet, but this is a lot more complexity, a lot more support hassle, and not currently a popular option, so I’m not expecting to win on this front, and this has nothing to do with supporting 2.0 or not. Perhaps at some point, we’ll see a little box with a stereo Dante ADC, a pair of midi 2.0 compatible din or trs ports, and clean DC out sourced from PoE — slap one on the back of each synth, run Ethernet cable, and you’re done, with evening else happening in the routing section of your Dante-enabled mixer and RTP-enabled midi 2.0 router. One can dream.

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I posted. about A2B upthread. ( and other places )

Outside the spec is the ability to transmit audio as well. USB is what will get used for now.

I’d favor really fast wireless Li-Fi myself.

Oh, and re: the way it’s used, it’s exactly the same — for insurance, if you plug the Electra One mk2 into you opsix mk2 (once the former is upgraded), the opsix will tell the Electra about the parameters that are available for control. The Electra will then lay those parameters out on the pages of its control surface via some default mapping, recognizing related controls like the elements of an envelope in the way that it does for manually-constructed presets. As it’s a device that leans heavily on user presets for control layout, it will probably generate a default layout preset but then let the user modify it, saving a lot of time and lowering the bar for using a new device. Something less complex like the stereoping controllers, on the other hand, might give you a default mapping that will get close enough, catching all the major controls while possibly not allowi g exciting, or at least not directly in the device.

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Oooh, I missed that! Cool! I’d prefer IP and integration with existing standards personally, but that’s in part because I have existing installed infra — I wouldn’t turn up my nose at something like that becoming ubiquitous, and it can always be gatewayed.

I’d really prefer to avoid wireless, though. I know in a lot of studio contexts it would be great, but I just don’t trust it live, and avoid it on anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be wireless. Wires are nice and predictable.

From what I can see Midi 2.0 is still not released on Windows. On their tech blog Microsoft had a tentative schedule to release the first version by the end of 2023 but they are a bit behind which is not unexpected.

Once it does I can see a lot of possibilities. For instance, I have Novation Remote SL which I bought in 2007. It had a technology called Automap which tried to do some of the same things as parameter exchange. Support is long gone and Automap has been end of lifed, but what makes it interesting is that they publish the API spec to interact with the LCD screens and features of the device.

Once Python on Windows has support for MIDI 2.0 I think it would be very possible to create a MIDI 2.0 bridge to this device. So python would talk to the MIDI 2.0 instrument/plugin and serve as the gateway to the Remote SL which was discontinued before MIDI 2.0 even came into existence.

I think this bridge concept could be used for any controller which supported screens above encoders AND allows API programming interaction. Just need someone motivated to create the software bridge.

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Ableton Live does something similar with the SL Remotes - the Ableton parameter names update on the Remote screens despite Automap being discontinued. I believe this is because Ableton has implemented the Remote API within a MIDI Remote Script.

Going off topic but good to know! Have an SL compact keyboard lying around. And a Push 1 for that matter.

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I see that Waldorf is adding MIDI 2.0 support to the Iridium and the Quantum. Looking for more detail about this.

( NAMM post )

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I watched that NAMM 2024 MIDI video. It’s strange to me how much they focused on high resolution of velocities, and spent so little time on property exchange. It was vaguely referenced once in passing, as if it’s not the killer feature of MIDI 2.0.

The Windows roadmap definitely had MIDI 2.0 slated for the end of last year, subject to change… and they’ve now given themselves to the end of this year to ship it. To gain very wide adoption this is just something we need, and really it can’t come soon enough. I think MIDI 2.0 could really take off once it happens.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, I am feeling impatient though and want it all to come faster.

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I think high resolution midi cc is the best part of midi 2.0.

Property exchange is nice to have, but I can imagine it will only work so so, as everybody probably wants to customize the parameters they control anyway. Only when you have a midi controller with lots of dedicated controls for specific parameters, or a controller like Push where banks of multiple controls are selected with buttons, it would make sense. But for the current Korg Keystage, I don’t see any benefit of property exchange.

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