MMA Hosts HD-MIDI™ Discussion at NAMM

Manufacturers Investigate Possible Major Update to MIDI

December 20, 2005

The MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) will provide an introduction to the High-Definition MIDI protocol (HD-MIDI™) concept during their annual membership meeting on Sunday, January 22, 2006, from 9am-10am at the Marriott in Anaheim CA, in conjunction with the Winter NAMM Show. Any manufacturer or software developer interested in being involved in the development of HD-MIDI can attend the meeting to learn how to participate in MMA activities.

"MIDI has worked fantastically for more than 20 years, but with today's computers and embedded microprocessors we can do much more than MIDI was originally designed to", said MMA President and CEO Tom White. "But more important, the new protocol enables us to build upon MIDI without abandoning all of the great hardware and software that already exists."

This proposed major update to MIDI would provide greater resolution in data values, increase the number of MIDI Channels, and support the creation of entirely new kinds of MIDI messages. The new higher-definition messages are intended to coexist with MIDI 1.0 messages, allowing software and hardware devices to use whatever combination of message types makes the most sense for the application and the transport (MIDI-DIN, USB, IEEE-1394, etc.).

"At this point HD-MIDI is just a topic of discussion, but we've seen a lot of interest in this from both hardware and software developers," said White. "Our policy is not to discuss MMA Specifications publicly until they're officially adopted, but in this case we want to make sure that all qualified companies have the opportunity to participate."

The MIDI Manufacturers Association is an industry non-profit organization that is responsible for maintaining and extending MIDI. Formed in 1985 by the original developers of MIDI, the MMA provides a forum where companies using MIDI can cooperate and collaborate to make their equipment interoperable. More information is available at http://www.midi.org/.

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