MIDI over LAN

DrJustice · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 7:12 pm Post subject: MIDI over LAN

Hi!

Yiha - first post Very Happy

- picking up from the Gear News "MidiOverLAN!!!" thread. http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-2880.html

After reading up on OSC i think I like it... For the readers benefit here's a quick rundown on what OSC is, as far as I have understood:

It's basically a scheme for stuffing an address, a timestamp and some data in a packet and dispatching that over some kind of transmission medium. From what I've read so far, very little is defined except the packet format, and a library (sdk). The sdk is very thin, mostly consisting of routines for the packet formatting and a callback mechanism to dispatch incoming packets. You supply a few simple functions to handle the packet traffic, e.g. by UDP. The timestamps have a resultion of 200ps, but no synchronization mechanism is defined - that's a DIY.

I reckon that using an Ethernet LAN and a switch, this could be a good alternative to MIDI. OSC does not (AFAIK) define any specific data types, and a MIDI transport might have to be defined. A defined high resolution parameter transport could be useful too. There may well have been done work on this that I'm not aware of. OSC is apparently used in e.g. C-Sound and Reaktor, so hopefully some common ground have been established. I need to research some more, but as I see it OSC may be a good starting point, partly because it's very loose (still) and because of the addressing scheme (like a URL).

Of course, it would be nice to know if any efforts one choses to put into MIDI over LAN will work with other systems. I wonder what hardware and software manufacturers positions are on the MIDI over LAN issue, and if they have any plans. Thinking here about standardization issues, not the few (proprietary(?)) products that exists in this area. IMHO Ethernet is a cost effective and simple interface quite suitable for taking over the role of MIDI. It would take so little to put an Ethernet port on new non- PC/Mac products (some already have one). Small 'standard' MIDI-to-LAN boxes could ensure the continued use of your old gear. Firewire is also popular - but is it ideal as a MIDI replacement? Got any good OSC info? Should we all just sit back and wait for the manufacturers to come up with the goods?

What are your thoughts?

DJ
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mosc · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 8:47 pm Post subject:

I don't know much about this. If I were to try it I think the easiest thing would be to use Keykit. I like the idea Tim has of delaying streams by a measure.

Were you thinking of writing end-to-end software?

jksuperstar · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 9:46 pm Post subject:

Gibson released a NET attached guitar (no links, but I heard of it through the chip vendor, Xilinx). They have created their own standard.

If this was combined with a distributed processing scheme, and the trend of software synthesis, it could easily extend to an "Audio Farm", where each computer in the farm would be responsible for a few tracks. Synch, audio, & MIDI info would be exchanged over the network. Thus, you could "render" your multi-track composition that is heavily laden with VST or AU instruments in real-time.

I just like the fact that I could use it to synch my audio & MIDI with a VJ's video (someone using Resolume, VVVV, etc, and whom typically run their stuff on laptops, but have no MIDI interface), and maybe some other (electro-)musicians.

DrJustice · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 9:51 pm Post subject:

My immediate personal interest is to be able to have a modern MIDI replacement. Meaning that ideally all devices should support MIDI transport over Ethernet in a transparent fashion. I'd also like an alternative method for devices to read and write each others parameters/data using a variety of data types (most importantly high resolution parameter control), perhaps supported by a 'discovery' protocol.

I'm thinking of any particular synchronization protocol. That would be a useful option for performance over over high latency connections, though. Keykit looks nice for what it is, but I couldn't really find anything on Konnect. Perhaps tjt can tell us some more?

At this point I'm trying to find an angle of attack on the subject, not knowing what's to come of it yet. When the matter becomes a bit more tangible, then I may know what software to write. The ideal would be if there was a clear standard that everybody supported. However, in our days of format and protocol inflation that may not be as easy as back in the MIDI heydays Rolling Eyes

Surely, I'm not the only person to want hyper-modern super-duper MIDI!?

DJ
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blue hell · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:52 am Post subject:

I don't know what OSC does exactly, but I once made a little something for myself that used relative time stamps on MIDI messages over ethernet.

The receiver can keep track of 'lost time' this way but this will not scale very well to a general multi-node environment. In that case probably a dedicated sync server should be in the system (as one of the nodes).

But still a guess has to be made about the time delays that will occur in the actual system. This guess might be wrong and this will always result in some messages being handled at the wrong time. Eventually this might settle although this can't be guaranteed. Excluding WAN and only using LAN will make the system more predictable of course.

The little something I made had a built in chat utility which seemed very handy to communicate amongst humans about setup trouble.

Jan.

DrJustice · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 8:09 am Post subject:

In July the OSC people held a conference, discussing protocols and and timing amongst other thing.
I found that here http://www.opensoundcontrol.org/about. OSC seem to be the only common standarization effort that is alive and they already have projects and products supporting it

It is obvious that playing globally over the net is on many peoples mind - OSC has a tentative solution. Once the requisite transport protocols are defined and a synchronzied clock implemented, it should as well across the globe as across the room. Simple timestamped FIFOs ought to suffice, but on a LAN that's probably not needed.

I'm going to support OSC, it may not mean much initially, but all little things add to its momentum. Now I'm off to http://www.opensoundcontrol.org/proceedings/ to see what came out of the conference. I hope KISS principles apply - just straight up MIDI without added show-stopping complications ought to come first, and that should be very easily doable. Its' easy to image protocols and addressing schemes that would work fine.

DJ
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mosc · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 8:10 am Post subject:

Yamaha seems ahead of the rest with the MLAN architecture.

Personally, I would be most interested in WAN MIDI communication. I'd like to jam with people over the internet.

As for Keykit. The way to learn about it is to load it up (free of course) and kick the tires. If you are a programmer, you will love it. If not, it's still lots of fun. The Keykit language is really designed for MIDI processing. Tim's Keykit mailing list is where you get questions ansered. But, I'm sure if our moderator asked him via PM to check out this topic, he'd do that.

DrJustice · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:58 pm Post subject:

OK - back from much searching and reading on OSC.

It does indeed have defined data types for the packet payload: floats, ints, midi messages, strings, BLOBs etc. - it's all right there, waiting to be used. They really have Hyper MIDI and more ready to go for anyone that is interested! Way cool Very Happy

To bad that it's such a well kept secret. After lots of searching I have found no evidence of general commercial support. There's a few boards that have people asking about it, notably the NI user forum, but there are few answers.

Anyway, OSC will be my focus - I find this the most viable course of action. Thank you play, for pointing me there thumleft

And yes mosc, there's Yamahas MLAN too. It's firewire based though, so it's not really a player in the same field as OSC as I see it (e.g. no WAN).

Now I'm off to a play time hypothetical design session, better put the kettle on...

DJ
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elektro80 · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:01 pm Post subject:

But mLan offers a lot anyway for LAN use? On stage .. etc

It seems to smart to have audio and midi and whatever in one cable.

tjt · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:37 pm Post subject: Konnect details

DrJustice · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:44 pm Post subject:

I'm sure mLan is fine in itself. However, for the purposes I (and possibly others) am thinking of, mLan and firewire simply isn't suitable.

Aside from technical issues there is one thing that I consider importent; the threshold for developers. OSC (over Ethernet) is something anybody can do right now at no cost. mLan over Firewire incurs big league corporate licensing just to say hello and it's more complicated - not one for the small developers. One of the many reasons why MIDI was (is!) such a success is it's simplicity and accessibility.

But hey - we should all embrace the globally capable OSC standard now Smile

(Sorry, you know about the newly converted...)

BTW: you can send anything through OSC, including audio.

DJ
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blue hell · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 5:05 pm Post subject: Re: Konnect details

mosc · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 8:34 pm Post subject:

Tim, are there some TCP ports better than others? Ist there a standard Konnect port number?

I would like to try jamming with a midi connection. Do you have some kind of synchroning system for people (not for the notes). I mean, how do people sync up to connect Konnect sessions?

DrJustice · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 9:17 pm Post subject:

Hi tjt!

Thanks for joining in Smile

I've been over and downloaded Keykit. Now I need to learn a bit about it. Perhaps there will be electro-music.com online jams sometime soon...

DJ
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mosc · Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:22 pm Post subject:

Good, DJ. I've had Keykit running here for maybe the last 20 years. Laughing

If we can get some experience with KeyKit, maybe Konnect will be good enough, or we'll learn more about what this kind of technology should really do.

tjt · Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 7:07 pm Post subject: how to use Konnect