Re: MIDI enumeration (was: Re: getUserMedia use cases)

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Joseph Berkovitz <joe@noteflight.com>wrote:

> On Feb 1, 2012, at 1:24 PM, Chris Wilson wrote:
>
> - Is the "synth" output designation in Windows useful?  The #voices, type
> of synth, etc?  Seems a bit overdone, to me.  It would seem like being able
> to tell "this is a software synth" would be useful - although
>
> Based on what I've seen so far I think it would be best to make
> synth-description metadata into a v2 thing, since in order to be actually
> useful my sense is that developers need much more info than voice count and
> hardware-vs-software.
>

You mean "Square wave synthesizer" vs "hardware wavetable synthesizer"
isn't a useful designation anymore?  ;)

> - How about the MIDI device manufacturer/product ID?  Driver version #?
>
> I think that is essential because one needs to expose some user-visible
> info in a device choice UI to know what device is being selected, if one
> wishes to drill down below the simple logical name level.  (For example the
> Java MIDI API on Mac OS X often exposes device names like "KEYBOARD" which
> is not terribly descriptive.)
>

Right - but remember I'm talking about the MIDI *output device*
manufacturer/product ID - so it would be "MOTU/MIDI Express XT", not
"Korg/MicroKorg".  Note I'm borrowing these concepts from the Windows MIDI
API, e.g.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd798467(v=vs.85).aspx
.

>From my past experience with having a MIDI studio with multiple identical
hardware interfaces set up, some kind of differentiation ("Micro Express
#2") might be nice.

-Chris