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>>> Yes, primarily I am wanting
to play music sequences. Like, I want to use GarageBand or some other
music creation program to make a song that I like. If I only use 5 drum
hits, some guitar strings and keyboard notes, etc, then I should be able to make
a song of great length and still keep the file size way down. Whereas if I
were to use MP3 or AIFF it seems like the file size would be much longer.
Probably if you make such a song in GarageBand, it is
saved in a proprietary format that does exactly what you just described
(contains the samples and the instructions to play them, and is not an MP3 or
AIFF file). But that file will
probably only playback in GarageBand (i.e. GarageBand's file format is not an
open industry standard that everyone uses).
If what you are asking is why there isn't a standard
way to distribute sequences with samples, that's exactly the objective MMA had
when creating the DLS file format.
A DLS file is a standard (approved by MMA members)
container for sound samples (and could also be for something other than samples,
such as DSP code). MMA also created RMID files (since deprecated) and XMF
files which can (among other things) contain DLS and SMF (MIDI) content
together that will do exactly what you described. But most
DAWs (and similar content developer tools) do not support XMF files, partly
because most samples come from developers who do not want them used
(redistributed) in that way.
Apple and Microsoft both happen to use the DLS format for
the samples in their OS synths, but I don't believe either of them provides any
tools or code that assembles DLS files with MIDI data in a playable file.
Certainly someone (anyone) could do this if they wanted to, since the
"standards" have already been written for that.
Tom
White
MMA
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