As you may have noticed, when playing Midi files, Windows Media Player 10 will not display visualizations. This is due to the fact that visualizations rely on audio data to display the animations.

As MIDI files only contain representations of which notes to play, which instruments to use, and special effects such as pitch-blend, visualizations do not have accurate aural sound data to use to display graphics. When MIDI files are played, the MIDI file is sent to the sound card, and only from the sound card's Wavetable is music generated. This data is not sent back to the computer, thus nothing is available to display animations.

For more information, refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article (though old, it is still relevant for version 10 of Windows Media Player):

MSKB 261862: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?
scid=kb;en-us;261862

FYI: Winamp 5, for the very same reason, does not show visualizations when playing MIDI files.

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