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July-September, 2007 (Vol. V, No. 3)

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Features In This Newsletter

This edition of the Lutheran Music Newsletter is an in-depth tutorial on computer music files, MIDI, WAV, MP3, etc., and the best uses for each.

What MIDI Really Is

Many computer users share a common misconception about MIDI files: they refer to and think of them as "audio" or "sound" files. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, MIDI files contain no sound at all. What they do contain is a music score: information about which notes to play, when to play them, how loud to play them and so on. MIDI files are digital sheet music.

As with all sheet music, if sound is what you're after, somebody (or something) has to read the sheet music and use a music instrument to perform the song described. In real life, a human musician might read sheet music and perform the song on a piano. When the "sheet music" is a MIDI file, the player is typically a computer program and the instrument is a synthesizer or a sampler (often just a single-chip synthesizer mounted on your computer's sound card). Give the same sheet music to musicians using different instruments, or play the same MIDI file on PCs with different sound cards, and the resulting sound might differ widely.

Compare this to a computer audio file like a WAV. A WAV file contains a recording—a detailed representation not of sheet music but of the actual sound waves that the listener is supposed to hear. From a musician's point of view, no interpretation or performance is involved in playing a WAV, just faithful (electronic) reproduction. Ideally, given the same WAV (or other audio file) two different computers will produce exactly the same sound. Audio CDs have a file format similar to WAV files and are intended to provide playback exactly as recorded by the musician.

Summary: MIDI files describe sheet music; WAV files describe sounds.

So What's Best, MIDI or WAV?

As you can see, MIDI files and audio files are completely different, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

A note-by-note description of a song, such as a MIDI, is ideal if you are a composer, since it allows you to change individual notes or other well-defined aspects of your composition (like tempo or instrument assignments and levels) without affecting anything else. In contrast, once a song has been recorded to audio (such as WAV), editing possibilities are extremely limited.

On the other hand, a WAV audio file is the best choice if you are distributing a finished song to an audience (such as a commercial music CD). The last thing you want as an artist is for the listeners to hear not what you intended but what their sound cards come up with when asked to interpret your MIDI file. Besides, a composer may not be inclined to give away notes in a format which anyone can read and manipulate with minimal effort.

Not to mention that MIDI files are strictly instrumental (no lyrics); if you want to have lyrics, MIDI is limited to sing-along (karaoke) mode. A human voice requires an audio file.

Summary: MIDI files are great for music production; WAV files are great for high-quality music distribution.

What's wrong with this picture?

Two things. One is that you see plenty of MIDI files on-line. There are public archives containing thousands of MIDI songs. That's certainly distribution, not production. Conversely, you do not see public archives containing thousands of WAV songs. Why is this, if audio is so great for distribution?

The answer is size. By their nature, MIDI files are very compact. A typical hymn only contains a few dozen notes. To hold them all, along with additional information like instrument assignments and volume levels, a few kilobytes of storage are plenty. So, MIDI files consume little disk space and bandwidth and load fast even through slow modems.

WAV files on the other hand are huge. Describing sound waves at the same level of precision (i.e. sound quality) as an audio CD takes 10 MB of data per minute of play time, or roughly 1,000 times more storage than a MIDI file of the same duration. You do not really want to download CD-quality songs in WAV format, even on a fast DSL or cable modem line.

These considerations are what led to the mass adoption of MIDI as the on-line music distribution format. Like many things in life, it was a compromise. No, MIDI files were not invented as a means of distribution and they are far from ideal in that role, but they are still very useful.

Summary: MIDI files are small, WAV files are huge. On-line, small wins.

MP3 for On-line Distribution

This dicotomy between WAV and MIDI was an unsatisfactory situation for on-line music distribution until the MP3 audio format entered the scene. By stripping non-essential information from sound data, MP3 encoding can reduce the size of a WAV file to about 1/10 of the original without excessive quality losses. This makes MP3 an acceptable compromise for on-line music distribution of single songs or even complete albums with 15-20 songs, especially with the advent of fast DSL and cable modems.

Summary: MP3 is the best on-line music distribution format for high quality sound.

Lutheran Music's Approach

Lutheran Music offers products utilizing all three music formats: MIDI, MP3 and audio. If you want to download a complete set of standard-quality music files for an entire hymnal, then our Midi Music Library products are ideal. If you want modern, higher-quality sound, please consider our MP3 product line delivered on a convenient USB flash memory drive. Alternatively, higher-quality audio music for entire hymnals is available in our audio CD sets.

To help you decide which music format is best for you, please open our music format data sheet.

Summary: Lutheran Music offers a wide variety of useful music formats.

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