Will Pyramid receive MIDI 2.0 support?

Hi,

Curious if it will be possible to add MIDI 2.0 support to Squarp’s USB in the future or if it’s not within the hardware’s specs.

Hey there.
That’s a great question.
Unfortunately this isnt the best way to ask Squarp a question as it’s populated with mostly us users. Best place to get in touch with the Squarp team is via their contact page at squarp.net/contact

If i may speculate just because this is a super interesting topic: i honestly dont know the parameters of updating existing hardware OS for the new protocol, but Im prepared for it to be unlikely. I am usually very wrong about many things, tho. :wink:

However, the talks Ive listened to regarding MIDI 2.0 repeatedly insist on backwards compatibility. That’s good for those of us whose data destinations (synths, fx, etc) are older (I’m ridiculously fond of 90s romplers) but seriously removes MPE support.

That being said, the Pyramid has some limits on data that I imagine MPE would just wreck like the big bad in a Michael Bay movie. Kaboom! :exploding_head:

If i may blather on, have we seen any MIDI 2.0 hardware sequencers yet?

:skull:

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I’d say its going to be many years before we see significant support for midi 2.0.

also i think support will be divided into two parts

a) high resolution
this could be quite tricky to implement, and could have hardware implications
e.g. if squarp are currently storing 10000 events at 7 bit. , if you increase this to 16 or 32 bit, thats going to be a massive drop in number of events stored.
(also its more data to shift = more cpu etc)

b) CI - capabilities
this I think is very exciting, and I could see getting traction faster,
for the simple reason, its a big problem with midi 1.0, as musicians have bigger setups its getting a pain for configuration etc - definition files of the pyramid are a typical solution to this issue. it be awesome if the pyramid could ‘live’ query the devices.

but as i said earlier, i think it could be years before we see widespread adoption,
so I suspect most manufactures/developers will be thinking of midi 2.0 for future products rather than trying to somehow ‘shoehorn’ them into existing products.

but who knows :slight_smile:

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Yeah I was wondering if in any case just some of the features would at least trickle down to Squarp and other products I own. When I was doing some reading it seems it may be possible for some devices to get just a few features rather than the whole gambit of MIDI 2.0. High resolution does seem problematic, but it’s also high up there on list of wants. If anything I’d like to see it enhancing CC resolution, if possible, at the least.

honest curiosity here: what synths support MIDI 2.0 currently?
Only device I can find so far is a Roland controller, but no controllers.
Perhaps I’m missing something. Sorry.

I’m super excited for MIDI 2.0, but it’s still kind of a vacuum, no?
Didn’t the spec just get finalised like 6 months ago?

Note: 2.0 is supposed to be backwards compatible, so I’m not throwing away my 80s & 90s gear yet! LOL

Edit to Add: I’d swear back in the ‘old days’ I’d be looking at gear and go, “Nope. No MIDI. Pass.” I think we’ll be seeing some of the spirit of that bit (aka “Nope. No MIDI 2.0. Pass”) in at least a few of the upcoming years. Pure speculation, sorry.

I get the feeling there might be a product that supports MIDI 2.0/MPE in about… 20 years after the standard is established… I can thing a of a bunch of niche products that have support for or are specifically MPE/Midi 2.0 But I can’t think of a generic one octave keyboard that supports MPE…