In our NAMM wrap up , we reported on all the exciting things that are happening in the world of MIDI 2.0.
Today is a major step in the adoption of MIDI 2.0 as Microsoft has just announced release of their first public version of their new Windows MIDI Services.
Today, we’re releasing the latest version of Windows MIDI Services to the Windows Insider Canary Channel, fully enabled for anyone to evaluate. We recommend this for technical users (as with any Canary release) and not for production use because we will have bugs.
You can learn more about the Insider release here.
The Windows Insider blog post details what’s in this release and in the associated Windows MIDI Services App SDK. Here are some more details.
The Windows Insider Canary Channel is provided for testing and evaluation on non-production PCs. Please see the Windows Insider blog post for additional information about the Canary Channel.
What’s in the box?
This Windows Insider release includes our new MIDI 2.0 and MIDI 1.0 class driver (kindly funded by AMEI and developed by AmeNote in partnership with Microsoft), the WinMM (MME) redirection driver and code, and the new Windows Service and its transport and transform plugins. It includes everything you need to be able to try existing MIDI 1.0 apps and devices, and to verify that they work as expected. It’s representative of how we’ll ship in mainstream Windows later this year.
MIDI 1.0 benefits with this release:
Every MIDI device is now multi-client, even for existing applications and devices. You do not need vendor drivers to enable more than one application to use a MIDI device.
MIDI Port names are now better. We’ve surveyed many MIDI devices in market and come up with algorithms which provide better port and endpoint names for these devices. But there will always be exceptions. If you see those, please report them to us on GitHub (developers) or on our Discord Server (everyone else)
Devices using the new USB MIDI 2.0 Class driver have faster data transfer. The USB MIDI 2.0 class driver uses faster data transfer mechanisms even for MIDI 1.0 devices. (If your MIDI 1.0 device is not picked up by the new driver, and is class-compliant, you can manually assign usbmidi2.sys to the device. We’ll post instructions for this in the future)
The new features are backwards compatible with your existing apps and devices USB MIDI 2.0 devices and USB MIDI 1.0 devices are both usable from the WinMM (MME) APIs in a MIDI 1.0 capacity.
Everything here works on Intel/AMD x64 as well as Arm64 devices
Here’s the WinMM backwards-compatibility in practice. Most apps you have today using WinMM MIDI 1.0 will work with the new service. If you find apps which do not, please do let us know (see how to report bugs/info below)
You can learn more about the Insider release here.
The Windows Insider blog post details what’s in this release and in the associated Windows MIDI Services App SDK. Here are some more details.
The Windows Insider Canary Channel is provided for testing and evaluation on non-production PCs. Please see the Windows Insider blog post for additional information about the Canary Channel.
What’s in the box?
This Windows Insider release includes our new MIDI 2.0 and MIDI 1.0 class driver (kindly funded by AMEI and developed by AmeNote in partnership with Microsoft), the WinMM (MME) redirection driver and code, and the new Windows Service and its transport and transform plugins. It includes everything you need to be able to try existing MIDI 1.0 apps and devices, and to verify that they work as expected. It’s representative of how we’ll ship in mainstream Windows later this year.
MIDI 1.0 benefits with this release:
Every MIDI device is now multi-client, even for existing applications and devices. You do not need vendor drivers to enable more than one application to use a MIDI device.
MIDI Port names are now better. We’ve surveyed many MIDI devices in market and come up with algorithms which provide better port and endpoint names for these devices. But there will always be exceptions. If you see those, please report them to us on GitHub (developers) or on our Discord Server (everyone else)
Devices using the new USB MIDI 2.0 Class driver have faster data transfer. The USB MIDI 2.0 class driver uses faster data transfer mechanisms even for MIDI 1.0 devices. (If your MIDI 1.0 device is not picked up by the new driver, and is class-compliant, you can manually assign usbmidi2.sys to the device. We’ll post instructions for this in the future)
The new features are backwards compatible with your existing apps and devices USB MIDI 2.0 devices and USB MIDI 1.0 devices are both usable from the WinMM (MME) APIs in a MIDI 1.0 capacity.
Everything here works on Intel/AMD x64 as well as Arm64 devices
Here’s the WinMM backwards-compatibility in practice. Most apps you have today using WinMM MIDI 1.0 will work with the new service. If you find apps which do not, please do let us know (see how to report bugs/info below)
Pete Brown
Microsoft and MIDI Association Executive Board ChairHere is Pete’ NAMM 2024 presentation and we should have the NAMM 2025 Latest MIDI 2.0 Developments in Apple, Google, Linux and Microsoft Operating Systems video up soon.
Here are links to more details on this important MIDI 2.0 milestone:
Special thanks to Microsoft, Amenote and AMEI (the Japanese MIDI Association) for their ongoing support of our efforts to improve the way musicians make music digitally.