Hello Peter, I often reflect on how unfortunate it is for the MMA to operate as such. I reflected on that years ago when I was adding DLS2 support to Swami. This format would have likely been a lot more popular if the specification was more open, such as what Creative Labs did with SoundFont.
At any rate, it seems like using the NRPN portion of MIDI is OK, which could potentially be used for adding reverb and chorus parameters (beyond the basics). In regards to Sysex, I wonder what happens when a company stops paying the yearly fee? Beyond the red "suspended" text in the manufacturer's ID table online, I can't see what other consequence there would be. Not that I'm suggesting anything in particular ;-) Best regards, Element On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 12:03 AM, Peter Billam <p...@pjb.com.au> wrote: > Greetings. Element writes: > > Seems like the MIDI standard doesn't really have a "unregistered" > > manufacturer ID though for Sysex which makes things awkward and > > I don't think it is worth trying to buy our own ID for $200/yr. > > I keep dreaming that something like the Free Software Foundation > will register as a "Manufacturer" then allow various open-source > project to construct their sysexes, identified by project-name > (eg: "fluidsynth") right after the initial magic FSF-bytes and > followed by a space or some other delimiter. But it's most > unlikely that the MMA would tolerate such a break-out :-( > > The cost of writing feral SysExes could be very high; you can > get sued by some vast global manufacturer who claims your sysex > caused one of its synths to upgrade its OS to garbage, and sues > you for reputational damage, up in the multi-Bn$-range ... > > There is an vary out-of-date list of manufacturers at: > http://www.blitter.com/~russtopia/MIDI/~jglatt/tech/midispec.htm > scroll the left frame to System Exclusive Manufacturer IDs and it says: > Educational Use 0x7D ( = ascii "}" ) > This ID is for educational or development use only, > and should never appear in a commercial design. > which does not mention open-source software designs, but Clemens > Ladisch in comp.music.midi reckoned don't mess with it except in > very strictly in-house files, it's asking for trouble; become a > MMA member instead. (I can't find the posting where he said this...) > > I wrote: > > http://www.midi.org/techspecs/index.php > > http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midimessages.php > Those URLs are out of date; the specs are now only offered by > the MMA in PDF form, and you have to "register" or "join": > https://www.midi.org/specifications/ > > Peter > > http://www.pjb.com.au p...@pjb.com.au (03) 6278 9410 > "Follow the charge, not the particle." -- Richard Feynman > from The Theory of Positrons, Physical Review, 1949 >
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