ARE GM2 AND XG BEING REPLACED BY GM ?

[♔Chello]

ARE GM2 AND XG BEING REPLACED BY GM ?

This may sound counterintuitive, but it is a fact that Ketron has long since moved away from GM2 to GM; Event also uses GM.

Korg has abandoned GM2, and mainly uses GM on the Pa5X.

Yamaha, on the other hand, still uses XG, which is increasingly causing compatibility problems for other brands, because XG contains many extra extended parameters that cannot be converted 100% to other formats.


The whole point of a midi standard (GM) is that all brands should be able to communicate with each other using the same parameters, and Ketron and Korg are heading in the right direction here, while Yamaha is heading off the cliff.

There will soon be a completely new standard for midi with parameters that have a scale from 0-1000 (approximately), compared to the current 0-127.

This will give us musicians a new dimension of reality and possibility for expression that the current standard will never come close to.

Many new instruments are already prepared for the new standard.

[✪aprilla]

Given a choice of files I generally opt for XG followed by GM, but I've had Yamaha keyboards so they suit me. But Roland do similar to Yamaha with their GS files (I think it's GS they use) and I've not noticed much difference, if any, when using them on my Yamaha.

But GM suits all. I hope the new standard with the added parameters will work for all keyboards, be backwards compatible. One of the things I admired about midi was that it just worked.