the idea of an all-encompassing midi format, or midi with soundbanks, has been discussed a few times over the years, but it carries a particularly difficult setback of needing hardware or other sometimes-elaborate setups to play the submitted midis back as their authors intend.

I'm wondering if there's a way to meet this idea somewhere in the middle and have it exist as a majors-only format - banned from XHB hosting. I was thinking about this in the context of wildchip & allgear, which have special rules for majors about being able to submit a source file and upload a render, since the mp3 is what's judged anyway.

basically: the wildmidi format would require a .mid/.midi/.rmf submission, but the target for playback could be anything - hardware rompler, rompler emulator, mobile phone, sf2 soundbank... anything you can pipe a midi file through. the submitter would provide a render from that hardware/source, or have somebody on deck to do so.

this is kind of a double-edged sword...

- the good part of this idea is that the need for voters to have a setup for the relevant hardware is eliminated. if it's only allowed in majors, the render can be used to vote. and anybody submitting to the format can do whatever midi stuff they're interested in, which is of course the best part! there's so much more out there than the free and easily accessible options we have as BotB formats, and it would be cool for those to have a more dedicated home besides wildchip/fakebit.

- the bad part of this idea is that it adds an "honor system" aspect, because without the ability to reliably listen to the source file as intended, we simply have to trust that the render is accurate and not doctored in some way. in basically every other non-mp3 format (OS restrictions aside...), any voter should theoretically be able to donload the entry and listen for themselves. so this would go against that ethos. it's also not super elegant to have a majors-only format in the first place, but I think if a format like this were to ever exist, this is how it would have to be.

I'm curious what y'all think or if there are any fresh ideas about an all-encompassing midi format here in the big '26. it's been on my mind especially since the recent software releases for S-YXG100

and MU2000

, which are amazing news on their own.

setting aside all of the complications that come with turning this idea into an actual format, i just don't really know how i feel about someone compiling an sf2/sfz with their own samples and using some midi softsynth that has a bunch of modern effects (well, for 2026 that is). i'm aware i'm being a bit hypocritical given what i

get up to in A Certain Existing Format but yea. just my opinion on the whole idea. tho i would be down for a format that combines a bunch of "approved" midi synths/modules into one (similarly to how msx+ has a bunch of allowed expansions), at least those which have usable software emulators (as you mentioned, s-yxg100, mu2k and others come to mind)

for me as a technically minded person the biggest question that comes to mind is "what's the spirit of this format, really" -- because if we allow everything except for midi data to be arbitrarily externalized, the possibilities are extremely broad. for instance, my staffcirc fm entry was written in faunatone using a reaper project for playback, which would be straightforward to nudge into the technical parameters of this format, but my intuition is that this would not be in the spirit of the format, because many DAW projects could be shoehorned into the format in a similar way. in fact worrying about "doctored" submissions seems silly to me when the scope of the format theoretically includes any kind of audio processing

if the intention is to be sort of like the staffcirc "midi module fanatix" album then that makes more sense to me intuitively and even if the boundaries aren't strictly defined i think we could comfortably call it as we see it. i don't love the special case we'd have to make for the source/render issue though

I think there's merits to different approaches to this hypothetical format, but personally speaking, I'd be most interested in the scope of the format being "sort of like the staffcirc 'midi module fanatix' album" - midis targeting any sort of hardware rompler / midi keyboard type situation.

I went wider with this proposal because it incorporates Bravoman's .rmf proposal and peoples' love for soundfont GM bank playback in one fell swoop, but it also seems fine to me to keep that a separate format idea and focus on romplers; maybe it makes sense to keep it contained simply because it invites fewer questions.

I think if it were to remain broad, I would want to keep the lines drawn at GM soundfont playback - granted anyone can make a soundfont, but I guess my intent would be like "this uses SGM" or "this uses Fluid" or "this uses the Pokemon Diamond/Pearl soundfont". I suppose I agree your example isn't really in the spirit of the hypothetical format, but midis being run through OPL are an old standard, which greys that line a bit further... perhaps the crux of the matter is that there is some specific target for playback that is at all recognizable + isn't your personal whatever.

I'm not really worried about the power of audio post-processing per se, since even the most basic XG implementations offer some rudimentary DSP, not to mention the more feature-rich romplers. I bring it up on principle though since it would be an unusual step away from our typical ethos about entry accessibility and rendering.

This reminds me another possibility that was discussed a while ago I think.

The idea is to create a wildmidi format that would be pretty close to the remix format. The host provides a soundfont and participants have to make a MIDI song for this soundfont.

I think this could be pretty fun and this would be pretty easy to play a song on different setups. However I'm a bit worried about the bitpacks sizes.

Also, this is a lot more restrictive than damifortune's idea as it would only allow the use of SF2 soundfonts to play the MIDI songs.

I dropped out of MIDI because of playback inconsistency, and I'm not sure if this would do the trick. Plus, ironically I know of a few genuine MIDI players as far as SPC700 sound drivers go, which means I can also blow your specification wide open in more than one way. (C700 doesn't count: I'm talking about sound drivers that play the MIDI data internally.)

format name is abbreviated as "widi", like the mythical "wcdonald's" from anime and manga

perhaps this paves the way for a sequencist class with all the midichipists and msgs... that'd certainly be enough formats for a class

Actually, I can add one more fun little detail to this... I have a genuine keyboard that can take MIDI. It doesn't actually handle General MIDI since the instruments are not arranged accordingly, but I could try to play back songs that I specifically design for the keyboard and then record them straight off of the keyboard. In hindsight, though, I don't remember successfully using the thing in many, many years... as in, I don't remember if it was the G3 or the G5 that last successfully took that thing, as I don't remember ever using it on the old Intel Mac (and the keyboard I would try to use it on is actually even older than the keyboard that I initially attempted to use it on, as the keyboard I originally tried to use it on had no sound output from the keyboard, meaning I was using it purely for playback purposes). Whether I actually try to do so will be another story.