What is MID? MID is a file extension for files that store MIDI music messages.
MIDI is a short name for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a standard protocol
introduced in 1983 to enable electronic musical instruments, computers and other equipment
sharing music data.
Technical notes on MIDI file format:
A MIDI file does not store any audio signals.
A MIDI file stores music data as event messages.
An event messages contains the pitch and intensity of musical notes, plus control signals.
A MIDI file can store up to 16 channels of event messages allowing multiple music instruments mixing music data together.
A MIDI file is much smaller than other types of music files. For example, a 4-minute movie music
MIDI file is only 26 KB. But a 4-minute movie music WAV file could be 4,000 KB.
The official name of a MIDI file is SMF (Standard MIDI File).
Here are the first 128 bytes of a sample MIDI file dumped in HEX values:
