General MIDI Extended

GME, short for General MIDI Extended, is a standard based off General MIDI level 1, which emphasizes on slightly extending the ability of General MIDI while not being too demanding. General MIDI Extended can be considered as a summarization of the common functionality among all GM-compatible synthesizers, and should be the baseline of all contemporary General MIDI-compatible synthesizers.

Requirements

Any GME-compliant synthesizer must adhere all requirements listed below.

• Has at least 24 oscillators available simultaneously (polyphony), which must either be...
  • At least 24 fully dynamically allocated oscillators for both melodic and percussion sounds.
  • At least 16 dynamically allocated oscillators for melodic sounds, 8 for percussion sounds.
• Supports all 16 MIDI channels, which...
  • Can play arbitrary number of voices within the polyphony limit.
  • Can change to a different instrument.
  • Channel 10 is set to percussion by default.
• Correctly responds to listed required events, CC and RPN.
• Has all voices listed in the required voice list.
• Has drum kits following the required drum note mapping.
• Correctly responds to required System Exclusive messages.