Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 3:24 pm
Agreed.
I guess I should explain exactly what a MIDI file is and why it isn't obsolete quite yet.
A WAV file has samples of audio stored at different frequencies. This is the computer equivalent of a tape cassette. You can record at different qualities, with greater qualities taking more space to store. An MP3 file is simply a compressed WAV file. Since audio data is pretty random to begin with, the only way to get good compression is to give up some quality, which is why MP3 encoding is referred to as "lossy".
A MIDI file has instructions for your computer about what instruments to play and what notes. This is the computer equivalent to a score sheet. Depending on the computer, the music can sound different since each computer uses different sounding instruments. Since it's just notes and instruments, the file size is small, so no compression is necessary.
The advantage is that MIDI files are much better at orchestrating a song using less space. It can do some excellent composing of songs, like the Dragonlance Overture. However, if you need sounds that can't be provided by the standard set of instuments, you should go with WAV or equivalent.