Re: MIDI Support in Pocket PC 2003 Premium???

Actually Jason MIDI was never intended to be an Audio format. MIDI is a
controller specification that allows various devices to communicate with
each other for the purposes of (mainly) playing musical instruments. MP3 and
MIDI are apples and oranges. MP3 doesn't even begin to provide the
capabilities that MIDI does with respect to instrument control and
playback. MP3 on the other hand is great as a compact digital format for
audio files.

MIDI is alive and well, it's just not being used for playing your favorite
Top 40 songs all that much. The problem with PPC is that I suspect that
most of the devices out there today do not have built-in synthesizer
hardware or support for emulation. There is emulation SW though I can't
speak to how well it works or sounds. As you stated MP3 is the more common
format for digital music playback.

Cheers
TC


"Jason Dunn, MS-MVP/Mobile Devices" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> > MIDI actually takes much less processor strength than audio. MIDI was
> > actually present (although not with a built-in softsynth, of course)
back
> in
> > the DOS days, x86 processors. I'm sure the current PPC processors are
much
> > stronger than the average processor for a DOS machine in 1985!
>
> Other than for musicians, MIDI is an obsolete and dead technology, so I
> doubt you'll see support for it from Microsoft, or even third party
> commercial developers - if there was a consumer demand for it, we would
have
> seen a player by now. Sorry to sound negative, but IMO, MIDI was
completely
> eclipsed by MP3 audio because for most people, MIDI = music, and MP3 is
real
> music. :-)
>
> Jason Dunn, Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices
> Pocket PC Thoughts - http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com
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