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Originally Posted by VG Music
MIDI sucks.
No it doesn't. Also, that's a statement, not a question. Try rephrasing that in the form of a question.
Why does MIDI suck?
As I responded to the statement above, MIDI doesn't suck. If MIDI sucked, it would not have been around for as long as it has, nor would it have become the standard that it is. I know of no other standard that is so versatile and portable and that can be used by such a wide range of equipment as MIDI. MIDI allows a single person with a single measly keyboard to produce the sound of a single piano, a full rock band, or an entire orchestra, as well as give that person full control over the entire sound. There are three things that might suck, but MIDI isn't one of them.
The first thing is you, but I don't want to be insulting, so I won't dwell on that one, as it probably isn't the case anyway.
The second thing is your sound card. This is the most likely possibility. If your computer is like most computers, your soundcard is probably one of the most overlooked pieces of hardware in it. You need more RAM, you need a faster processor, you need more hard drive space, these things you notice, but your sound card works in games just as well as it did the day you got your computer. That's the problem. Many people with older systems or recycled soundcards will have a Sound Blaster 16 (or compatible) card in their system. A standard SB16 uses FM synthesis for MIDI, and that is what sucks. FM makes most drums sound identical to the seashore instrument, makes the gunshot sound like a drum, and makes most every other instrument sound horrible and not even close to what it should (Except for the Square wave, which it does quite accurately). If this is the case, not all is lost for you. There is something called wavetable that does a very good job at banishing the evils of FM. Instead of synthesizing instruments like FM does, wavetable plays actual instrument samples. The quality of the wavetable relies heavily on the quality of the samples, however, but you are almost guaranteed to get a better sound than FM (If you don't, complain to the person/company you got it from). You have several options on getting wavetable on your computer. The simplest (and cheapest) option is a software wavetable emulator (Addressed in a later question). But, if you have a little extra money, it would probably be best to upgrade to a Wavetable sound card. I have seen them for less than $30. Newer computers should come with wavetable already, either in the form of an actual card or through something such as the Microsoft Music Synth. These are of varying quality, but all should sound better than FM.
The third possibility is that the file itself is no good. A MIDI file is not a direct translation of the song, so something may be lost in the MIDI version. Usually this loss is ignorable (The flute doesn't sound quite right, the guitar hits the wrong note every time, the piano is too loud), but occasionally I have heard songs that have made me wonder if the sequencer was completely deaf when they sequenced it. These files transcend the differences between FM and wavetable or the differences between particular sound cards, these files are bad all around.
If even after all of this you still think MIDI sucks, well, you are entitled to that opinion, but don't come complaining to us about it. If you don't like them, don't download MIDI files and don't visit this site. It's that simple. MIDI was not designed to do some of the things you're probably thinking it should (Voices are an example). Complaining about that would be like yelling at a dog because it can't fly.
What can/can't MIDI do, anyway?
Well, General MIDI can do a good many things, include reproduce pretty much any piece of music played on a wide variety of traditional instruments and capable of being scored using traditional means. It's great for anything from pretending to be a garage rock band to pretending to be a full symphony. It has major instruments from the Western Classical music side of things, through Africa and India, to East Asia. As far as instruments go, if you want it, it's probably there (Or at least a close enough replacement). That's where its main weakness comes in. While it does the instruments it contains rather well, it mainly sticks to instruments. It has a few synth sounds, but outside of the square wave and a few others, the sound of them changes so drastically between devices so as to make them useless for anything that's going to be played elsewhere. So, however ironic it is, the greatest weakness of General MIDI is its inability to handle Synth/Electronic music well. General MIDI also doesn't do sound effects (Outside of a few rather useless ones, included in the standard). That means it doesn't do voices, either. Many people use this to point at MIDI and label it inferior. To them, I ask: "Can your car fly? Can your car float?" The answer is, of course (For most circumstances), "No." Does that make your car inferior to a boat or an airplane? No. They were designed to do totally different things. MIDI was designed to connect a number of devices and coordinate playback and recording and facilitate editing. It does that well. I'd like to see a digital audio format do that. So, by the same logic that MIDI sucks, MP3 sucks because you can't change that electric guitar to an oboe in the middle of a song.
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