Introduction
3DMIDI is a brand new audio technology from Sound Blaster X-Fi that allows MIDI instruments/channels to be positioned anywhere in a three dimensional space. This opens up new possibilities and frontiers for electronic MIDI musicians to experiment with positional audio, thus creating a more immersive and exhilarating listening experience for their audiences.
The beauty behind 3DMIDI is that each instrument in a MIDI track can be discretely manipulated. Meaning, if you want to position the lead guitar of a midi track to the rear-left channel, and the grand piano to the front-right channel, it can be done effortlessly without the need for advanced mixing tools. This is virtually impossible with other formats such as MP3s, AACs and even DVD-Audio, where the channels and instruments are fixed during the mastering process.
All being said, these wonderful advances in audio production methodologies would be deemed "excessive" and unnecessary by audio consumers if they are only accessible to professional electronic musicians.
Therein lies the birth of 3DMIDI Player.
The 3DMIDI Player
3DMIDI Player is a player/application with an intuitive graphical interface that allows the easy manipulation of MIDI instruments in a three-dimensional space. It makes 3DMIDI accessible for everybody - from layman audio consumers to full-fledged electronic musicians - to experiment with 3DMIDI and discover a whole new listening experience with MIDI.
The 3DMIDI Player. Works with any MIDI files.
The first thing that grabs your attention as you launch 3DMIDI Player is the large, blue radar screen-like display. This display gives a top-down visualization of how the instruments are positioned around the listener, located at the center of the cross hairs. You can drag the instruments to re-position them anywhere in this 360-degree panned space. By doing so, typical 2-channel MIDIs are instantly transformed into multichannel 3DMIDI files!
"Moving" instruments
The idea of positioning the instruments around the listener may seem all fine and straightforward. But, 3DMIDI player ups the ante further by providing a convenient interface for you to specify the "paths" taken by the instruments. This feature causes the instruments to move around the listener (in a 3D space no less) as the MIDI file is played. This is another aspect that is unique only to 3DMIDI.
For example, if you've selected the "Left <-> Right" movement path for the piano, it will move from the left speaker channel to the right speaker channel in a periodic manner as the MIDI track is played.
Conclusion
With Sound Blaster X-Fi technology, you don't just listen to audio anymore; we have made audio 'listen' to you.
Just load any MIDI file into 3DMIDI Player, drag the instruments to the desired positions, select the preferred movement paths and click Play to realize how immersive MIDI files can sound with a little 3DMIDI magic.
