MIDI

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a protocol used by electronic instruments to send and/or receive musical event data between each other. The protocol is used for real time transmission of data and for playback and recording of MIDI files. A device that can play and record MIDI is called a sequencer and a device that can generate audio from MIDI events is called a synthesizer. MIDI devices can be hardware objects, such as an electronic keyboard synthesizer (which can generate both MIDI event data and audio), or entirely software based, as are soft synths and virtual instruments, often used in computer based music production.

When most internet users still used dial-up connections, MIDI was a popular format for transmitting music files over the web. The quality of the playback of a MIDI file would depend on the soundcard or soft synths installed on your system. However, since many users now have faster connections, MP3 has become the standard format for sending actual audio data over the net.

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