PNW Section’s March 2026 meeting was Zoom-only and presented the MIDI alternative, Open Sound Control (OSC). The presenter was Michael Ashton, PNW Committee and founder of Ashton Research and former Moog engineer. About XXX people attended, XXX being AES members.

PNW Chair Jess Berg opened the meeting with general info and announcement of the PNW April meeting with Larry Crane (of TapeOp).

PNW Committeeperson Michael Ashton is an engineer who spent twelve years in the musical instrument business. After designing guitar amplifiers and DJ mixers, he worked on synthesizer products at Moog Music, where he was system architect for the Moog One, and designed the oscillators. Today he is working on new audio products at Ashton Research, https://ashton-research.com. 

First there was a description of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) which dates back to the early 1980s. MIDI was and is very popular, but CNMAT at UC Berkeley came up with a more powerful alternative, OpenSoundControl (OSC) in the 1990s. Michael described the data structure of the OSC message format, then some history of the development of OSC. Computing power was increasing, and MIDI wasn’t always up to the task. By 1997, OSC was available in the MAX software environment.

By the early 2000s, hardware & software products started coming out with OSC support. Michael described the 2012 Native Instruments Traktor Z2 digital DJ mixer, which he worked on, and utilized OSC. He noted that at the time, he was not too impressed with OSC, but was won over.

Ashton also spoke about designing with OSC vs MIDI, and about his work on the Moog One synthesizer (released 2018), notably using Delta-Sigma converters and all OSC control.

He also described reasons for not using OSC. Some consider it big & heavy (compared to MIDI); perhaps a weak standard, with no governing org, & limited compatibility even if flexible. MIDI has certainly gotten more capable with 2.0.

There may also be bandwidth considerations, and he compared MIDI 1.0, OSC, & ethernet.

Finally, Michael gave his view of the future of OSC vs. MIDI vs. something else new.

For more reading:

OSC homepage:

https://opensoundcontrol.stanford.edu

MPA’s personal site:

https://mpashton.dev/osc/

Michael had lengthy answers/discussions with the commenters, and finished with an extended general talk and chat.