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PaulDavisThe1st • yesterday at 6:02 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

This is not really correct.

The objections to MIDI lie in its simplification of musical pitch (which isn't 100% baked into the specification, but does turn out to be overwhelmingly common in actual practice).

This article is mostly about timing, which MIDI doesn't have a huge amount to do with, and the specification doesn't really have any particular problems in this area (it's a series of timestamped events; the resolution of the timestamps is arbitrary, so MIDI can precisely represent incredibly wonky or incredibly precise musical timing).

There are also issues with MIDI 1.0 if you want to provide more performance information on a per-note basis, as happens when playing many instruments. There is an excellent workaround for this with MIDI 1.0 (called MPE - MIDI Polyphonic Expression) but people wanted more and these days MIDI 2.0 mostly provides it.