GDC 2007: The future of next-gen audio is MIDI – WHAT THE…

No, this isn’t GamePro’s April Fool’s Day special (for crying out loud, it’s only MARCH!). They report on a GDC session where Dolby (which puts the Dolby in Dolby DTS) announced that their vision of the future of audio in games will be MIDI.

Insert tinny MIDI Final Fantasy VII victory theme here – no, not that pre-recorded synth in X.

They weren’t kidding, it seems. The Dolby reps said that today’s processing power in computer processors means that they can make MIDI a little more “real.” They claim that with next-gen, MIDI can attain a fidelity comparable to or even better than dedicated synthesizers. And it will be smaller and faster to load than the pre-recorded stuff (one reason why Nobuo Uematsu went MIDI with FFVII).

Final advantage: because it’s MIDI, and not pre-recorded, it can be programmed to be interactive – to sync with and react to in-game events and game flow – and the improved MIDI should still be able to deliver “a sound similar to an orchestrated score.” And maybe still control a Roomba vac, too.

This we have to hear. No really, this we have to hear.

No, this isn’t GamePro’s April Fool’s Day special (for crying out loud, it’s only MARCH!). They report on a GDC session where Dolby (which puts the Dolby in Dolby DTS) announced that their vision of the future of audio in games will be MIDI.

Insert tinny MIDI Final Fantasy VII victory theme here – no, not that pre-recorded synth in X.

They weren’t kidding, it seems. The Dolby reps said that today’s processing power in computer processors means that they can make MIDI a little more “real.” They claim that with next-gen, MIDI can attain a fidelity comparable to or even better than dedicated synthesizers. And it will be smaller and faster to load than the pre-recorded stuff (one reason why Nobuo Uematsu went MIDI with FFVII).

Final advantage: because it’s MIDI, and not pre-recorded, it can be programmed to be interactive – to sync with and react to in-game events and game flow – and the improved MIDI should still be able to deliver “a sound similar to an orchestrated score.” And maybe still control a Roomba vac, too.

This we have to hear. No really, this we have to hear.