No Midi Support in Metro

Hello Anon,
I am the Escalation Engineer for the Windows Audio team
I would love to have MIDI available for Windows 8 Metro style apps since I am an electronic musician as well as an engineer (http://www.jamesdailey.com/Music.aspx). I just want to be completely honest and say that MIDI really isn't on the radar at this time. The reality is that we are focusing on high quality low latency audio in Windows 8 to support the trend toward VOIP.
The recording industry is quickly moving away from HW synths to SW based synthesis. Personally I have all of my MIDI gear plugged in and ready to go but I don't know that I've turned it on for over a year. My go to keyboard, an Axiom 49, plugs in via USB. I have a handful of "legacy" MIDI HW synths but hundreds of soft synths (its an addiction). My guitar amp is even gathering dust thanks to NI plug-ins.
So at this time we really don't see a super compelling need to support legacy MIDI devices in Metro style apps. My guess is that MIDI will stay on the desktop until its completely eclipsed by soft synths and USB based devices. What I really want to see is a MFT wrapper around the VSTi SDK so I can load my soft synths in Metro. Unfortunately this isn't likely to happen either due to our new Metro style app distribution model. VSTi ISVs would likely need to provide "WinRT friendly" versions of the instruments to be packaged with your application. Unfortunately I just don't see this as a reasonable model.
I really wish we had a better story for professional musicians wanting to write or use Metro style apps. I am currently pursuing the shared VSTi scenario with our PMs but in reality we aren't going to see anything like this for RTM. If anything changes I will certainly let you know.
I hope this helps,
James

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mink99 schrieb:

The recording industry is quickly moving away from HW synths to SW based synthesis.

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