From dwatson@oceaninlay.com Fri Jun 03 05:19:49 2011
Subject:RE: USB-MIDI (Was: Nord C2 as a Controller) [OT]

I 'second' what Norm said about Bruce being "one smart dude". Bruce, thank
you very much for taking the time to lay it out for us. Obviously the great
majority of us are using MIDI and perhaps have been doing so over twenty
years. Now that USB is an industry standard that allows the passing of MIDI
protocol, it is really helpful to understand that nuances, limitations and
idiosyncrasies of both. Many of us are using both MIDI and USB hardware,
many times simultaneously. You really have to have a handle on both in an
effort to have a dependable interface, especially on stage. It can be a
frustrating experience.

We do appreciate your technical expertise and sharing, Bruce!

-----Original Message-----
From: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Bruce Wahler
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2011 7:00 PM
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [CWSG] USB-MIDI (Was: Nord C2 as a Controller) [OT]

Hi Simon,

Apples and Oranges, I'm afraid.

'Vintage' MIDI is limited to 31.25Kbit/sec, or 3,125 bytes/sec --
roughly, 1K messages per second. That sounds like a lot, but for
complex MIDI setups and data/audio transfer, it's sorely lacking.
Transmitting a 50MB piano sample will take almost 4.5 hours. What makes
it even worse is that MIDI uses 7-bit data, so even sending 100 bytes of
data takes more than 100 bytes! Even real-time use has limits: If a
computer-driven performance needs to send a downbeat on all 16 channels
at once, the attacks will be spread over a 16mS window.