Technical Specifications
MIDI messages are made up of 8-bit words, and are transmitted serially at a rate of 31.25 kbaud. This nonstandard transmission rate was chosen because it is an exact division of 1 MHz, the speed at which many early microprocessors operated. The first bit of each word identifies whether the word is a status byte or a data byte, and is followed by seven bits of information. A start bit and a stop bit are added to each byte, so a MIDI byte requires ten bits for transmission, of which only seven contain MIDI data.
A MIDI link can carry sixteen independent channels of information. Devices set to a specific channel will ignore the messages sent on all other channels. An individual device may be either monophonic or polyphonic, and can be either a monotimbral instrument that can play only one sound at a time, or a polytimbral instrument that can play multiple sounds at once. Receiving devices have an "Omni on/off" mode that determines whether they respond to all channels or only one, and a choice of "mono" or "poly" mode, which determines whether the instrument plays monophonically or polyphonically.
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