MuseScore is using MIDI meta-events 8 & 9 for private meta events, thus conflicting with MMA SMF specifications of 1998

• Jul 16, 2013 - 13:09
Type
Functional
Severity
S4 - Minor
Status
closed
Project

This made itself apparent during this discussion:

http://musescore.org/en/node/21827

The MMA defined MIDI meta-events 8 & 9 in 1998 as
1) A new Meta Event 09 called Device Name Meta Event is used for the purpose of naming the device to be used on a track.

FF 09 len text DEVICE NAME

2) A new text Meta Event called Program Name, names the program referenced by the immediately following sequence of bank select and program change messages.

FF 08 len text PROGRAM NAME :

Full details can be found here.
http://www.midi.org/techspecs/rp19.php

Unfortunately Werner has defined these as 8 - Title and 9 - Subtitle presumably being unaware of this change to the MIDI 1.0 spec.

Although in theory MIDI software should completely ignore meta-events it doesn't understand, there are some applications which are showing it as an error - in particular the Hauptwerk Organ sample synth.

Therefore in order to guarantee no future conflicts with SMF export I propose that we use the unused block of MIDI meta-events from 0x10 to 0x14.

Unfortunately this will have an impact on SMFs exported from MuseScore 1.3

I have already written the code changes for this and am ready to submit a pull request, but I thought it wise to air it here before doing so.


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