Midi is a protocol which was developed in the early 80s of the previous century, as a way for computers to "communicate" with musical instruments. Back then each company had its own protocol, midi was intended as "universal language" to enable all the different brands to "talk" to each other.
It was universally accepted, and really has not fundamentally changed since then (which is quite phenomenal, if you think about it).
But in the end of the day, it's just a set of instructions: note on, note off, sustain on, vibrato on or off, velocity on a scale of 0 to 127, and so on. How these commands are translated into music is really dependent on which virtual instruments or synthesizers are hooked up to the sequencing program where those midi notes and commands are programmed into. And the sound produced could be anything from basic midi (which sounds like an 80s video game) to a detailed full fledged orchestra.
The way Sibelius deals with midi, is a bit unusual, and mysterious; it has a "sound world" where all of the instruments are organized by group. If you set up a score and choose an instrument, the software will automatically pick the corresponding instrument. Those instruments are not synthesized, by the way (as in: electronically generated wave forms), they are sample based, from recordings of real instruments.
A sound file is an electronic recording of the sound that is ultimately produced; could be recorded live, or using virtual instruments. As a general rule, the more information is contained in that file, the more detail you will hear. The ubiquitous mp3 files are compressed, using mp3 technology; in doing so, some detail will get lost. For most pop music you might not be able to tell the difference, but if you have a high end recording of e.g. a symphony which goes all the way from ppp to fff, and a high fidelity playback system, with uncompressed audio will be able to hear all the fine nuances. The flip side of that is that it takes up a lot of space.
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Peter Roos
www.summeroflovemusic.com IMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm2039241 |