On my super-duper 804593 bit sound card, my $2000 keyboard, or my El Cheapo $19 sound card, MIDI files sound so cheesy it’s sick. Why hasn’t this technology improved? One would think you could store decent samples of instruments in a relatively small amount of RAM/ROM…
Once Upon a Time[sup]TM[/sup], they did improve them. Look around for MOD files. They’re essentially MIDI, but with embedded samples, so they sound the same regardless of your hardware.
In the olden days, before MP3, it was the only way to trade songs that sounded decent.
It may just be the speakers…most computers come with
whimpy small speakes that suck. My computer is hooked
directly to a stereo system, and MIDIs sound fairly good
oooh! I remember thee good old days… when everything was
DOS based, and before ‘the web’ was around, connecting to
local BBSs (Bulliton Board Systems)…at 2400bps, and then
i got a 14.4k modem…
somewhere along the line windows 3.1 showed up (and is
still in use today)
MODs and S3Ms were great, and you could make real surround
sound (Dolby Pro Logic)…which can’t be done in a MIDI
If you were real lucky you had FTP access on a UNIX
system… and a list of sites.
I also remember MIDI on FM-Synth cards…
…oops that post made me sound really old…
I’m terribly sorry if this sounds condescending, but there are a lot of people out there who have no clue as to what MIDI, MIDI files, or GM are.
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) as the name implies is a digital code that allows digital musical instruments to exchange information. Originally this was meant so that you could play your Korg synth with a Yamaha keyboard and such, but soon enough people realized that you could do a lot more with the code. i.e. record it (hence MIDI files - kind of like a digital score), send it through a network, or use it to control things that aren’t even musical, like lights and pyrotechnics.
The most basic MIDI instruction would go something like, “on channel 1, play note 63 with a velocity (strength) of 34.” This could play a soft E# FM patch on a DX7, or set off a huge napalm Hollywood explosion. Depends on the receiving end.
If you’re only patching synths together in a studio, there’s no big problem with the instruction above. However when you start sharing MIDI files you run into problems related to the fact that ultimately there is no way of knowing what playback device people are going to use. The preset that plays back on your synth as a beautiful grand piano comes out as cheezy strings on another.
MOD files addressed this problem by having the instrument samples imbeded in them.
However, the solution that won in the end was General MIDI. GM is a list of 128 instruments. That’s all it is, a list. Synths that are GM-compliant will always have a patch called “acoustic grand piano” on preset #1. What “acoustic grand piano” actually sounds like is entirely up to the manufacturer, but it shouldn’t be too much like a french horn.
What many people don’t seem to realize is that MIDI does NOT carry any sound information. In that sense, they are fundamentally different from MP3’s and whatnot and thus any comparison between the two is irrelevant.
So, to answer the question. Your MIDI files sound cheezy because either:
- You’re playing back cheezy songs.
solution: get better music. - You’re playing them using a cheezy-sounding synth. solution: get a better one.
- The piece was cheezily performed. solution: find a different version.
- You have cheezy speakers. solution: get better ones.
Also, keep in mind that GM synths, because they have to pack a great number of presets often don’t sound as good as specialized units. I’ve heard my share of cheezy 2000$ synths (what’s your model?) so there’s no way the cheapo device on your soundcard is going to sound like a Nord Lead. Also keep in mind that synths are synths and in many cases still don’t sound nearly as good as acoustic instruments - when that’s what they try to replicate. 100% synth-sounding synth music like techno or Morton Subotnick is unplayable using GM.
So yes, due to technical limitations, GM files often sound pretty cheezy.
However, the overwhelming majority of popular music recorded after 1983 of so, has al least some MIDI-controlled parts (even if it’s just the effect-processor). So cheezy-ness is in no way imbeded into the interface itself. (Now that I think about it there’s been a lot of cheeze produced since MIDI was invented. . .)
Again, I’m sorry if this was (long/ obvious/ pedantic/ out of place/ badly explained). Really.
If you want MIDI to sound semi-realistic you need to use recordings of real instruments (either with a sampler or a wavetable synth). In a wavetable, a recording of a base note (such as middle C) is stored in memory and used to extrapolate six or seven nearby notes. That way, in order to hear all 88 keys of the piano, you only need 12 seperate samples in memory.
This usually sounds okay, depending on the instrument and how many samples you use. The timbre of a piano tends to change drastically from one note to the next so you need more samples to make it sound right. Instruments like the clarinet have less variation and demand fewer samples.
If you really want good sound you have to record a seperate sample for each note (and possibly more to capture variations in note velocity or playing style). This has been done with something called a GigaPiano (using Nemysis’s GigaSampler, a hard disk sampler). It’s called “GigaPiano” because it uses something like 1 gigabyte of memory. From all indications it sounds almost perfect – only pro’s can tell that it’s not a real piano just by listening to it.
Since General MIDI specs call for 128 instruments, you’d need a LOT of memory to make each of those instruments sound good. That’s why wavetable synths generally use the extrapolation scheme I described above rather than recording one sample for each note. They also use complicated compression algorithms to cram all those sounds into a reasonable amount of ROM.
You can buy high-end sound modules or samplers to make your MIDI files sound really good but you’ll find compromises in even the best hardware. Usually the more obscure instruments like the bagpipe or the sitar have to be sacrificed in order to make the more popular instruments like piano sound good. So until we start seeing cheap gigabyte- or terabyte-sized ROMs, MIDI is probably not going to sound that great.
Additionally, the quality of a MIDI depends on whether or not the person who made it put any effort into the process.
I personally love MIDI’s. I have a vast collection, and I think most of them sound great through my SBLive sound card (especially if you turn up the reverb). However, I have about seven different MIDI versions of the “Back To The Future” theme… one of them sounds absolutely spectacular, five others sound DECENT, and the last one sounds like absolute shit. Remember, the MIDI composer has designed their MIDI to match THEIR synth, not yours. If the original composer had a crappy synth, it (probably) won’t sound too wonderful on a good synth.
Finally, some MIDI’s are just set up to be a series of beeps or chimes, like they’re being played through a Game Boy or something.
So if you only have one copy of a MIDI, and it sounds bad, then delete it and go hunting for a different one. MIDI rule of thumb: If the file is smaller than 10 KB, it’s probably not going to sound too hot. If it’s greater than 30 KB, it’s likely to sound nice. There are exceptions - it depends a lot on song length, for instance - but it’s a nice gauge to follow.
A friend of mine has a beautiful Roland electronic piano with all the bells and whistles. Being a computer-geek and not a musical-geek, I noticed that the piano had a floppy drive and the term MIDI on it. So I found my better sounding MIDI files and popped them on diskette and played them on his piano. He thought I became a virtuoso overnight.
The Roland sounded incredible compared to my computer.
I have a small collection of MIDIs which never sounded quite right until I got a subwoofer for my PC.
My favorite MIDI site, based in Key West, unfortunately removed their huge library during a rebuild after a hurricane. Turns out they’re being sued.
To simplify jovan’s explanation: A midi file is basically sheet music, and the sound card that’s playing it is equivalent to the orchestra. Both need to be good for the final product to sound good. If the orchestra’s only tuba has been dropped on the floor 15 times too many, the valves have never been oiled, and it’s out of tune, then any piece with a tuba part is going to sound lousy.