music networking - ZIPI and OSCP (was RE: new HW/SW trend?)

["Michael LaMeyer" <m.lameyer@verizon.net>]

About 10 years ago, someone (Dr. Z would know ;-) was designing an
electronic music protocol called ZIPI that could run over industry standard
network protocols like TCP/IP (maybe only TCP/IP? can't remember).  It
totally abandoned the keyboard-centric MIDI model of serial data "remote
control" messages with a more open ended and 'musical' message hierarchy.  
I
think development has been largely abondoned but it appears that some of 
the
same developers are working on a new idea called Open Sound Control
Protocol:
http://cnmat.cnmat.berkeley.edu/ZIPI/
http://cnmat.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/

Implementing this protocol would require manufacturers to broadly accept
this as a standard and essentially abondon MIDI altogether, if I'm not
mistaken.  Seems unlikely given the immense investment everyone's already
put into MIDI.  mLAN is essentially an attempt to get around some
limitations with MIDI without asking everyone and their mother to toss MIDI
out the window.  Alas, I wish we would. ;-)

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Wagner [mailto:jondrums@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 3:28 PM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Re: new HW/SW trend?


> I've been wondering if manufacturers would move more towards "real"
networking, ie: Ethernet.  With Gigabit ethernet hardware chips coming down
in price, giving bandwidth to spare, I'm wondering why manufacturers 
haven't
moved in that direction.
>

Me too. ethernet seems so obvious - its been around for a long time and its
not going anywhere anytime soon, and bandwidth is not a problem at all.  I
wonder, is there a problem with variable (unpredictable) latency of 
ethernet
used for with audio stuff?
Jon