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MIDI versus digital audio
Short answer
MIDI stores musical instructions (notes, instruments) and is very small, but sound varies by playback device and cannot store vocals. Digital audio (WAV) stores sampled waveform, is large (about 10 MB per minute at CD quality), and sounds identical everywhere.
Differentiate between MIDI and digital audio (WAV).
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a protocol that stores music as a list of instructions (which note, how long, which instrument, how loud) that a synthesiser plays back. Digital audio (for example WAV) stores the actual sound wave as numeric samples taken from an analogue signal.
| Point | MIDI | Digital audio (WAV) |
|---|---|---|
| What is stored | Commands/events such as note on, note off, velocity, instrument | Samples of the sound waveform (PCM) |
| File size | Very small (a few KB per minute) | Large (about 10 MB per minute at CD quality) |
| Sound produced by | Synthesiser or sound bank of the playback device | The recorded sound itself |
| Sound consistency | Varies with the playback device | Same on every device |
| Can it store speech or vocals | No | Yes, any sound |
| Editing | Easy: change notes, tempo, instruments without quality loss | Harder: editing the waveform, quality may fall |
| Recording | Needs a MIDI keyboard or sequencer | Needs a microphone and ADC |
| Typical use | Music composition, game background music, ringtones | Speech, effects, music CDs, voice recording |
| Quality control | Depends on synthesiser | Depends on sampling rate and bit depth |
| File extension | .mid | .wav |
Example
A 3-minute song as MIDI may be about 30 KB, while the same song as 44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo WAV is about 31.8 MB (1,411,200 bits/s x 180 s / 8). But the MIDI song can sound different on a phone and on a good sound card, and cannot contain the singer's voice.
✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)
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