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MIDI
Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is an industry-standard electronic communications protocol that defines each musical note in an electronic musical instrument such as a synthesizer, precisely and concisely, allowing electronic musical instruments and computers to exchange data, or "talk", with each other. MIDI does not transmit audio - it simply transmits digital information about a music performance
If we compare digitized audio with raster graphics, MIDI is a vector graphic instructions are required to be provided to software in order to play it To make MIDI scores, a sequencer software and a sound synthesizer is required A MIDI keyboard simplifies the creation it has inbuilt synthesizer
This information allows that note to be recreated exactly on another MIDI device Quality of playback depends upon the end users MIDI device not on recording, MIDI is device independent
When a note is played on a MIDI-aware instrument, it transmits MIDI messages. A typical MIDI message sequence corresponding to a key being struck and released on a keyboard is:
the user started playing the middle C note, with the specified velocity (volume) the user changed the force with which he is holding the key down (can be repeated, optional) the user stopped playing the middle C note
Other performance parameters would also be transmitted. The musical instrument does this completely autonomously requiring only that the musician play a note or do something else that generates MIDI messages. MIDI compatible musical instrument will always transmit
All MIDI compatible instruments follow the MIDI specification and thus transmit identical MIDI messages for identical MIDI events such as the playing of a certain note on the musical instrument. Since they follow a published standard, all MIDI instruments can communicate with and understand each other, as well as with computers which have been programmed to understand MIDI messages using MIDIaware software. The MIDI interface, converts the current fluctuations transmitted by a MIDI musical instrument, into binary numbers that the receiving musical instrument or computer can process. All MIDI compatible instruments have a built-in MIDI interface. In addition, computer sound cards usually have a built-in MIDI interface - if not, it can be separately purchased as a card and easily installed.
Sequencer software quantizes the score to adjust for timing inconsistencies The data recorded in MIDI can be edited easily If one sound is recorded on one device (piano) and it has to be changed to another, the sound has to be re-recorded and re-digitized In MIDI, it maintains a value for each instrument To change instrument, only the change in value is required General MIDI numbering system has 0-127 numbers for synthesized instruments
ID numbers of instruments have to be precisely mapped from software to software Otherwise, original MIDI recorded with piano would be played with guitar Recording MIDI configuration has to match with playing device MIDI configuration MIDI is more suitable for production than playback
In windows, digitized sounds are commonly stored as WAV files Liner Pulse Code Modulation is used for music CDs There are three major groups of audio file formats:
uncompressed formats, such as WAV, AIFF and AU formats with lossless compression, such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio (filename extension APE), WavPack, Shorten, TTA, Apple Lossless and lossless Windows Media Audio (WMA). formats with lossy compression, such as MP3, Vorbis (filename extension OGG), lossy Windows Media Audio (WMA) and AAC
MPEG Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented and standardized in 1991 by a team of engineers at University of Hannover, Germany. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. MP3 is a compression format. It provides a representation of pulse-code modulation-encoded (PCM) audio data in a much smaller size by discarding portions that are considered less important to human hearing
Wav - WAV (or WAVE), short for WAVE form audio format, is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing audio on PCs. Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data on personal computers.
The format was co-developed by Apple Computer based on Electronic Arts Interchange File Format (IFF) and is most commonly used on Apple Macintosh computer systems.
The Au file format is a simple audio file format that consists of a header of 6 32-bit words and then the data.
The format was introduced by Sun Microsystems.
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), also known as MPEG2 Part 7, is a digital audio encoding and lossy compression format. It was popularized by Apple computer through its iPod and iTunes Music Store. True Audio (abbreviated TTA) is a free, simple real-time lossless audio codec, based on adaptive prognostic filters which has shown satisfactory results comparing to majority of modern analogs. Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a proprietary compressed audio file format developed by Microsoft. It was initially a competitor to the MP3 format, but with the introduction of Apple's iTunes Music Store, it has positioned itself as a competitor to the Advanced Audio Coding format used by Apple
MIDI is used when Less RAM, hard disk space, Bandwidth, CPU processing power Production and playback instruments are of high quality Spoken dialogs are not needed
Digital audio is used when No control over playback hardware Enough computing power and bandwidth Spoken dialogs are required
Sound on web
2 methods of playing Wait for entire sound to download and then play it Enough sound is cached in buffer and playback begins while rest of the sound is being downloaded and cached
Dependent on connection speed If the bandwidth is low, jittering occurs file begin to play fine but skip or momentarily stop due to low bandwidth
Space
1.94 MB for 11 seconds of uncompressed red book stereo sound Compressing can help to reduce till one eighth file size Downsampling is done to reduce filesize Formula to estimate the storage needs for mono channel
Production Tips
Audio recording .
Record Sound Material on tape as First step . Choose Sampling Rate
Testing .
COPYRIGHT
Owners Rights are significant issues . Royalty Free license