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MIDI: The future in gaming audio?
By Julio Franco, TechSpot.com
Published: March 12, 2007, 2:00 PM EST




MIDI: The future in gaming audio? Straight from this year's Game Developers Conference, Dolby disclosed details on an advancement in MIDI technology which they say will make it "the future of audio technology in next-generation console gaming." The news came as a shock to the audience, after all MIDI remains in our memories as an old, old standard practically unused in today's games and applications.

But MIDI has improved, the Dolby representatives said. Due to the power of next-generation consoles, MIDI samples can attain a fidelity comparable -- or even better -- than those performed on dedicated synthesizers. Plus, file sizes would be smaller and load times would be quicker.
Dolby says that processing power is not as scarce anymore and high quality tunes could be created using MIDI, furthermore its use could add to the experience as real-time interactivity could be easily achieved.

5 user comments so far.

 

[ There are 5 additional user comments, Post a Comment | Send to a friend ]

Posted by DragonMaster on March 12, 2007 at 2:28 PM
Well, MIDI is the same old thing as it was 10 years ago, it's just that now there are decent wavetables available, while everybody had FM or 2MB wavetable synths.

Since about every games just have music made with high quality wavetables converted to compressed audio, it would be quite easy to get recent machines play the songs. It's more memory, CPU and space intensive to use MIDI with good samples tho, unless you return to the default wavetable set Creative gives you with the SoundBlaster Live and Audigy series.

Posted by dreamelectric on March 12, 2007 at 2:36 PM
Im not quite sure what this means. Maybe if you could site a source, this would make more sense. ALL game audio is made using MIDI. Midi is not an outdated standard. Almost every composer in the game/film industry uses midi. Does this mean that the games will have there own built in midi engine? I am interested in this news, as i work in the pro audio industry, but this article is clearly incomplete and contradicts its self. You state midi is old and no longer used, but then state "MIDI samples can attain a fidelity comparable -- or even better -- than those performed on dedicated synthesizers". All synthesizers use MIDI. Also, midi files contain no audio, so how could they "attain a fidelity comparable....". MIDI has no fidelity, MIDI is not audio, it is simply data that tells the audio what to do.

Posted by Julio on March 12, 2007 at 6:15 PM
Cited the source now, obviously I forgot the link before:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129720-c,gameconsoles/article.html

Posted by dreamelectric on March 12, 2007 at 6:37 PM
Seems like the article has been moved or withdrawn from PC Worlds site.

Posted by DragonMaster on March 13, 2007 at 4:38 PM
quote:
You state midi is old and no longer used,


MIDI is no longer used directly in games like 10 years ago. (Where you had to have a MIDI synth to hear music)

quote:
Does this mean that the games will have there own built in midi engine?


Probably, instead of a recorded version of the MIDI-made music. To make consoles play music comparable to the one used in movies and games, it would need samples bigger than the songs themselves, so it's not really an advantage.

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