Windows MIDI 2.0 Developments

[Jim Fogle]

MIDI 2.0 is getting ever closer to becoming a reality in Microsoft Windows.  I received the quote below from a MIDI Association email today. 

Quote

Yesterday Microsoft posted on their development blogs about the opening of their Github repository for MIDI 2.0.

The opening of this Open Source repository is a major step forward for MIDI 2.0 as Apple and Google have already implemented MIDI 2.0 in their operating systems.

We have put a link to Pete Brown's Windows Dev Blog Post "Hello MIDI 2.0 – We’re opening the repo!" below. 

In that article he said "You can find the repo here, but before you click, I encourage you to read on so you know what you’re looking at/for."  

Our thanks go out to AMEI (the Japanese MIDI organization), Amenote (the Canadian company working on the Open Source driver), and Pete Brown and the whole Microsoft team for making this happen.

 

For developers interested in MIDI 2.0, +++ HERE +++ is the lnk to the Pete Brown article mentioned in the quote above.

[User 905133]

My e-mail also arrived today. So I was going to post this to the MIDI 2.0 thread I posted a week or so ago.  I will just post just posted a cross link to this thread, so people can discuss the new news-of-the-day here.

Edited June 21, 2023 by User 905133
updated post

[User 905133]

Some Cakewalk users might be interested in this material on having unique serial numbers for USB devices.  Why do I mention this?  Well, because lots of Cakewalk users might be able to relate to this (and related) issues:

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How Windows identifies USB devices

Have you ever noticed that when you unplug a device from one USB port, and then plug it into a different USB port, you’ll sometimes see it pop up as a new device, and maybe even get a driver installed?

That can happen when a USB device doesn’t include the iSerialNumber field, and you plug it into a port which shows up as a different parent device, impacting the calculated unique id for that USB device. When a device doesn’t include an iSerialNumber, operating systems use various techniques to uniquely identify the device, as best as they can.

So, maybe under MIDI 2.0 these kinds of issues will not happen.

Edited June 21, 2023 by User 905133
clarifications added

[Jim Fogle]

14 hours ago, User 905133 said:

Some Cakewalk users might be interested in this material on having unique serial numbers for USB devices.  Why do I mention this?  Well, because lots of Cakewalk users might be able to relate to this (and related) issues:

So, maybe under MIDI 2.0 these kinds of issues will not happen.

@User 905133, thanks for highlighting the USB device unique serial number issue. USB Device is a small utility program that helps users manage redundant USB devices.

[User 905133]

Thanks for the link to USBDeview, Jim.  It shows that my E-Mu 2x2 MIDI interface has a serial number, but my evolution MK-449C controller doesn't!  It gives a lot of information and has quite a bit of functionality.  Handy utility!!!!!!  

[Pete Brown]

18 hours ago, User 905133 said:

Some Cakewalk users might be interested in this material on having unique serial numbers for USB devices.  Why do I mention this?  Well, because lots of Cakewalk users might be able to relate to this (and related) issues:

So, maybe under MIDI 2.0 these kinds of issues will not happen.

It only goes away if device manufacturers add unique serial numbers to their devices. All the operating systems have to work around this, and we'll continue to do so.

MIDI 2.0 has in-protocol mechanisms to get device unique IDs, but if a device can do that, it likely would be able to have an iSerialNumber anyway. Also, those don't show up upon connection (we're not doing any in-protocol stuff right when we enumerate a device, or else Windows would take forever to start up) so they wouldn't change how Windows itself would see the device.

[azslow3]

18 hours ago, User 905133 said:

So, maybe under MIDI 2.0 these kinds of issues will not happen.

Nothing has forced Microsoft to make "MIDI device" to "USB device" mapping tricky. 

And how they are going to improve that at the end is not really MIDI 1/2/(3...) dependent.

Also giving every device an unique Serial is an extra cent (or several) per device. Microsoft and MIDI do not have power to enforce anything. Some companies are ignoring USB specifications even for such devices as USB hubs... who cares...