MIDI vs. OSC

MIDI and its younger "cousin" OSC are closely related in function, but differ in their advantages and disadvantages.  As a matter of fact, OSC was created as a way of getting around the problems inherent in MIDI's most basic form.  Here is a rough primer into the pros and cons of both audio protocols.

MIDI (short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface) became the standard for digital music producers in 1983 for allowing a wide array of musical instruments to interact with each other and with a computer.  Because it allowed musicians to create complex musical scores in only a few hundred lines of code and in a relatively compact file size, it ushered in a whole new generation of music producers.

As great as MIDI is, it does have its drawbacks; namely, the fact that data must be ordered sequentially, which could pose a problem when faced with heavy data streams.  Enter Open Sound Control, or OSC, a protocol developed in the mid-90's to get around MIDI's transfer speeds and its representation of pitch.  Transmission rates for OSC take place at broadband network levels, making it faster than MIDI in some cases.  In addition, where MIDI can only represent pitch as an integer data type, OSC can represent it as an integer or a floating-point type, making it less restrictive.  Yet, one major advantage MIDI has over OSC is that its messages are much smaller in size than that of the latter's, thereby making MIDI the preferred choice when it comes to playing audio on mobile devices.  Also, the advantage in speed when using OSC seems to be null when both protocols are transmitted over equal media.

One major problem holding OSC back is that it is not as widely used as MIDI, so it is unlikely that it will become the new standard.  Therefore, while OSC might benefit the musician in one instance, MIDI might serve him/her better in another.  For this reason, many people find using MIDI and other alternatives, such as OSC, to be ideal.