MMA position on XMIDI Technology
MIDI Manufacturers Association 

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Position Statement

XMIDI: A Standard or Not? 

Three times in the past year a magazine or online publication has
claimed that a new technology called "XMIDI" is poised to become a new
standard for synthesizers. The MMA position on XMIDI was established in
mid-1995, by request of Digital Design and Development, the developer of
XMIDI. After substantial review of the technology by the MMA
membership's elected Technical Board, and with follow-up discussion with
various members, the MMA concluded that XMIDI was not likely to be
adopted by the music products industry in the near future and that the
MMA membership as a whole was not interested in establishing XMIDI as an
industry adopted standard.

The MMA Technical Board released the following statement: 

  First, we genuinely applaud the effort of the developer for attempting
  to make MIDI into a different and, in their eyes, better. However,
  despite some very clever engineering on the part of the developer,
  extensive review and discussion by the MMA's Technical Standards Board
  and many of our members indicates that XMIDI would create more
  problems than it would solve for the vast majority of current and
  future users of MIDI. What follows are four main reasons which have
  led to this conclusion:

  1) MIDI is inexpensive and royalty free. These characteristics are
  considered vital to our membership and a prime reason for its
  acceptance and proliferation. A custom hardware solution from a single
  source would represent a 180 degree change in direction.

  2) The non-orthogonality of the XMIDI interface makes it extremely
  difficult to write manageable software to parse it, and more
  importantly, to relate it to the user in an non-confusing manner. MIDI
  is now being evaluated for adoption in a number of high-volume markets
  where design simplicity is crucial. The Tech Board feels that
  introducing anything that risks increasing design difficulty and user
  confusion would compromise both the interests of the greater MMA
  membership and our customers.

  3) The MIDI Specification is open for everyone to use. The requirement
  of secrecy agreements for each licensee of XMIDI is unacceptable. MIDI
  is based on the spirit of cooperation and consensus. Secrecy
  agreements would completely undermine this spirit.

  4) The MMA membership has indicated many times that enhancements to
  MIDI should not increase the amount of data traffic on the 31.25 Kbaud
  serial line. In our opinion XMIDI would clearly increase traffic a
  great deal, adding to the current problems of MIDI response time with
  dense controller activity.

  In conclusion, we once again express our interest in any effort to
  design a low cost, high speed MIDI alternative that would be royalty
  and copyright free. We believe a design with such characteristics
  would be warmly welcomed by the MMA membership. We do not believe that
  XMIDI meets these requirements.

Since issuing this statement, the MMA Tech Board and executive
management has encouraged DDD to discuss these issues openly on our
member forum. So far, there has still been no discussion worth noting,
and none of the 120 or more MMA member companies (other than DDD) has
openly expressed support for XMIDI becoming a standard.

It is not the MMA's intention to restrict or control technology, and it
is certainly possible that there are companies building XMIDI products.
But without MMA endorsement -- or endorsement by some large group of
influential manufacturers in or out of the MMA -- XMIDI is not going to
become widely available, and therefore will not be adopted as a standard
any time soon.

- TW 
