Updated MIDI 2.0 Spec Now Public - Repo Also Open For Devs

US Sign up and start working on those apps! 20/06/23

Microsoft have opened the Developer Repo For MIDI 2.0 over at Github (which they own if you didn't know). The repo is being contributed to by AmeNote - who we spoke to at NAMM (link to video). They are working on the full MIDI 2.0 stack and are committing when they hit their milestones.

For most of us, this doesn't mean anything, but for developers who are looking to incorporate MIDI 2.0 functionality into their existing or upcoming project, it means the gates are open to get going. Hopefully we'll now see some of the promised functionality of MIDI 2.0 arriving in apps and hardware we use- Yay!

However there are some changes to the MIDI spec - which if you are interested, you can read in full here on MIDI.org - its dense so hunker down if you are going to read it...

According to this blog post on Microsoft's Dev blogs by Pete Brown, there are some important changes:

MIDI-CI protocol negotiation has been deprecated (most other MIDI-CI uses remain), which is a big deal for us because it just didn't make sense to handle things that way on a Plug & Play aware OS. There is also the concept of "groupless" messages (more correctly referred to as "stream" messages) for function blocks and other configuration, which fundamentally changes how you might interact with a UMP Endpoint. Lots of goodness in there. Function Blocks are a big section in the specification, and worth the read.

The MIDI 2.0 Specification has been under NDA for some time now while the final details were discussed and finessed. Why? Because:

Until specifications are fully adopted by the MIDI Association and AMEI, we keep them inside the associations. During the review and approval process, there are always changes, and sometimes those can be small but significant. Keeping them under NDA until the final vote ensures that we don't end up with diverging versions of the specification and implementations out in the public and in products. The NDA means that the in-progress specifications can only be shared with voting members of the MIDI Association and AMEI. This really works out in everyone's best interest, especially the MIDI user.

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I highly encourage you to join the MIDI association so you have access to all the discussions and best practices which have evolved.

For those who are interested the Microsoft MIDI repo on Github is here:
https://github.com/microsoft/midi

Its good to see that Microsoft remain committed to contributing to and implementing the new MIDI 2.0 specification, we really hope to see some progress soon, but Pete is cautious in what is likely to happen, as there is still a lot of work to do, but there's a table of milestones and it looks like we can expect MIDI 2.0 (v1.0 release - yeah, weird!) by the end of this year.