MidiInAndOut.md

Sending and Receiving MIDI Events

NAudio allows you to send and receive MIDI events from MIDI devices using the MidiIn and MidiOut classes.

Enumerating MIDI Devices

To discover how many devices are present in your system, you can use MidiIn.NumberOfDevices and MidiOut.NumberOfDevices. Then you can ask for information about each device using MidiIn.DeviceInfo(index) and MidiOut.DeviceInfo(index). The ProductName property is most useful as it can be used to populate a combo box allowing users to select the device they want.

for (int device = 0; device < MidiIn.NumberOfDevices; device++)
{
    comboBoxMidiInDevices.Items.Add(MidiIn.DeviceInfo(device).ProductName);
}
if (comboBoxMidiInDevices.Items.Count > 0)
{
    comboBoxMidiInDevices.SelectedIndex = 0;
}
for (int device = 0; device < MidiOut.NumberOfDevices; device++)
{
    comboBoxMidiOutDevices.Items.Add(MidiOut.DeviceInfo(device).ProductName);
}

Receiving MIDI events

To start monitoring incoming MIDI messages we create a new instance of MidiIn passing in the selected device index (zero based). Then we subscribe to the MessageReceived and ErrorReceived properties. Then we call Start to actually start receiving messages from the device.

midiIn = new MidiIn(selectedDeviceIndex);
midiIn.MessageReceived += midiIn_MessageReceived;
midiIn.ErrorReceived += midiIn_ErrorReceived;
midiIn.Start();

Both event handlers provide us with a MidiInMessageEventArgs which provides a Timestamp (in milliseconds), the parsed MidiEvent as well as the RawMessage (which can be useful if NAudio couldn't interpret the message)

void midiIn_ErrorReceived(object sender, MidiInMessageEventArgs e)
{
    log.WriteError(String.Format("Time {0} Message 0x{1:X8} Event {2}",
        e.Timestamp, e.RawMessage, e.MidiEvent));
}

void midiIn_MessageReceived(object sender, MidiInMessageEventArgs e)
{
    log.WriteInfo(String.Format("Time {0} Message 0x{1:X8} Event {2}",
        e.Timestamp, e.RawMessage, e.MidiEvent));
}

To stop monitoring, simply call Stop on the MIDI in device. And also Dispose the device if you are finished with it.

midiIn.Stop();
midiIn.Dispose();

Sending MIDI events

Sending MIDI events makes use of MidiOut. First, create an instance of MidiOut passing in the desired device number:

midiOut = new MidiOut(comboBoxMidiOutDevices.SelectedIndex);

Then you can create any MIDI messages using classes derived from MidiEvent. For example, you could create a NoteOnEvent. Note that timestamps and durations are ignored in this scenario - they only apply to events in a MIDI file.

int channel = 1;
int noteNumber = 50;
var noteOnEvent = new NoteOnEvent(0, channel, noteNumber, 100, 50);

To send the MIDI event, we need to call GetAsShortMessage on the MidiEvent and pass the resulting value to MidiOut.Send

midiOut.Send(noteOnEvent.GetAsShortMessage());

When you're done with sending MIDI events, simply Dispose the device.

midiOut.Dispose();

Sending and Receiving Sysex message events

Sending a Sysex message can be done using MidiOut.SendBuffer(). It is not necessary to build and send an entire message as a single SendBuffer call as long as you ensure that the calls are not asynchronously interleaved.

private static void SendSysex(byte[] message)
{
    midiOut.SendBuffer(new byte[] { 0xF0, 0x00, 0x21, 0x1D, 0x01, 0x01 });
    midiOut.SendBuffer(message);
    midiOut.SendBuffer(new byte[] { 0xF7 });
}

Receiving Sysex messages requires two actions in addition to the midiIn handling above: (1) Allocate a number of buffers each large enough to receive an expected Sysex message from the device. (2) Subscribe to the SysexMessageReceived EventHandler property:

midiIn = new MidiIn(selectedDeviceIndex);
midiIn.MessageReceived += midiIn_MessageReceived;
midiIn.ErrorReceived += midiIn_ErrorReceived;
midiIn.CreateSysexBuffers(BufferSize, NumberOfBuffers);
midiIn.SysexMessageReceived += midiIn_SysexMessageReceived;
midiIn.Start();

The second parameter to the SysexMessageReceived EventHandler is of type MidiInSysexMessageEventArgs, which has a SysexBytes byte array property:

static void midiIn_SysexMessageReceived(object sender, MidiInSysexMessageEventArgs e)
{
    byte[] sysexMessage = e.SysexBytes;
    ....