Sobre os arquivos MID

Áudio MIDI

Lançado em 1983 Por MIDI Manufacturers Association

Padrão de comunicação musical (1983). Não armazena áudio — armazena instruções (notas, instrumentos, timing). Tamanhos minúsculos (KBs). Padrão de produção musical há 40+ anos.

Família

Audio Files

Extensão

.mid

Tipo MIME

audio/midi

Pode ser usado como

Entrada

A história

COMO NASCEU O
FORMATO MID.

1981

1983

MIDI — Musical Instrument Digital Interface — was drafted in 1981 by Dave Smith and Ikutaro Kakehashi and ratified by the MIDI Manufacturers Association in 1983. The protocol lets electronic musical instruments communicate note, velocity, pitch-bend, and controller data; the .mid (or .midi) file format stores a sequence of those messages with timing information. Crucially, a MIDI file does not contain audio — it contains instructions for how to play something on a synthesizer. What you hear depends on the soundbank your player uses.

For two decades MIDI was everywhere. Early web pages auto-played MIDI background music. Early video games (Doom, Final Fantasy VII, The Secret of Monkey Island) shipped soundtracks as MIDI because a 500 KB .mid could play 90 minutes of music. Sony’s PS1 and Nintendo’s N64 used MIDI-like sequence formats internally. Today MIDI remains the interchange format of professional music production (every DAW speaks MIDI) but is rare as a delivery format to consumers.

CURIOSIDADES E
FATOS INTERESSANTES.

A MIDI file stores instructions, not audio — what you hear depends entirely on the synthesizer or soundfont used to play it back.

Dave Smith (creator of MIDI) received a Grammy Technical Award in 2013 for his 1981 proposal that standardized electronic music communication.

The Doom (1993), Duke Nukem 3D (1996), and Final Fantasy VII (1997) soundtracks are all MIDI — billions of virtual orchestras played via synthesizer chips.

MIDI can store 127 different notes and 127 different velocities per channel — ±1 bit more and the spec would have been mainframe-era legacy.

A 90-minute symphony can fit in a 200 KB MIDI file because every note is 4 bytes of data, not audio samples.

VANTAGENS E
LIMITAÇÕES.

Vantagens

Extremely compact — kilobytes for hours of music.
Editable in every DAW (Logic, Cubase, Ableton, FL Studio, Reaper).
Universal hardware interface for electronic instruments.
40+ years of stability — MIDI 1.0 files from 1983 still play.
MIDI 2.0 (2020) extends to 32-bit velocity and polyphonic expression.

Limitações

Not audio — playback quality varies wildly by synthesizer.
Cannot represent vocals, samples, or non-synthesizable sounds.
Web browsers stopped auto-playing MIDI around 2005.
Consumer listeners almost never encounter .mid as a delivery format.

Tamanhos típicos de arquivo

Pop song (3 min)

10-50 KB

Full game soundtrack (Doom-era)

100-800 KB

Orchestral performance (90 min)

200 KB - 1 MB

Especificações técnicas

MIME type: audio/midi
Extensions: .mid, .midi, .rmi (Microsoft variant)
Standard: MIDI 1.0 (1983), Standard MIDI File (SMF) 1.0
Successor: MIDI 2.0 (2020)
Protocol: Serial MIDI 31.25 kbit/s (legacy hardware)

CONVERTER A PARTIR DE
MID

mid mp3 mid wav mid flac mid aac mid m4a mid ogg mid opus mid wma mid aiff

Casos de uso comuns

Music composition, sequencing