Sound cards
Greg,
What exactly are you asking about if the CDPC card `support MIDI playback
at anything beyond the FM-Synthesis technology…'?
These two technologies are related (often used together for musical
purposes) but *are* different. Midi, which stands for Musical Instrument
Digital Interface, is a standard format which allows machines to
communicate. MIDI is used to connect MIDI controllers (sequencers,
computers, keyboards, breath instruments, microphones, guitars, brum pads,
etc) to sound origination devices (keybaords, computers w/ necessary HS
(such as the CDPC), drum machines, tape decks, etc), to mixing consoles, to
effects units, etc. The data runs in both directions in most/many devices
in & out.
Before MIDI, all of this stuff was strung together using seperate Voltage
and pitch gates for each function which was to be transmitted from one
device to the next. The standard was 1 Volt/octave. Pitch and trigger
were the most common parameters, but many systems could also accept other
information. The problem was, each manufacture wanted to control different
types of triggers (start and end of `events') & voltages (the modulator)
and also wanted to control them in different ways! -ugh- This tended to
allow devices within one manufacture to easily talk to only devices from
the same manufacturer.
Just try getting your MiniMoog to talk to our ARP Odyssey!
Midi is a universal *software* interface spec (also talks about what goes
onto cable, I think) and allows Everybody to talk to Everybody.
-great relief-
<cont>