MIDI in SL

I posted in the scripting board by mistake, sorry for the multiple posts...anyway. Correct me if Im wrong but the only audio formay that can be used in SL is uncompressed wav files which tend to be quite large. First off, why not mp3 support? Seconly, what about the incorporation of MIDI into SL. That would open up all sorts of possibilities. First off files are tiny in size. Prerecorded songs could be sent almost instantly. More importantly it would create the possibility to stream midi. For instance a Piano object that when activated by a user would transmit the MIDI-In information coming from the users RL keyboard, drums, or any midi capable instrument. This would create the possibility of virtual jam sessions between a number of SLers. Any thoughts?

-T-Bone Thomson

MIDI is a great idea in theory, but the trouble is that every last user is going to have a different patch set for their sound cards, and most of them are absolutely awful. A song that sounds halfway decent to you will make another user want to tear their hair out. I have the MIDI channel on my sound card muted because some web pages are still embedding midi files, even today.

What I would suggest is adding support for .ogg and "mod files" (.mod/.it/.xm/.s3m). If you don't know what these are, imagine MIDI, except that all the samples are included in the song, so it plays exactly the same way on everyone's system, no matter what. Typical "mod files" are around 50K-500K. Some are larger but the lion's share are well under one megabyte. There are plenty of mod players for every platform under the sun, even Java.

MIDI support might even allow in-game music production if done right



edit: weee, I guess I should have date-restricted my search for audio file info. O.o Sowwie *hides*

It's a nice idea but NOTE-ON/OFF won't work except possibly for arythmic sounds or for performances which don't depend on accurate timing.

Have you ever tried playing an instrument with 10ms lag let alone 250ms !

Even at 20ms it's extremely difficult to play in time with other people.

If you've ever tried MIDI accross a local network you'll know the problems, just imagine them magnified 100 fold.

However having MIDI controllers in LSL would be nice, but don't hold your breath!




What I'd really like to see in SL is some sort of scriptable DSP too.

I think MIDI has been overlooked, Please Mr Lindon, can we have some MIDI.

please no midi , yay for mod tho.

If you really what MIDI the JIRA is the place to discuss and vote for it.
A request already has been made: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-639