Why Does MIDI Offer 127 Notes

Question

Is the 127 note values in MIDI musically significant (certain number of octaves or something)? or was it set at 127 due to the binary file format, IE for the purposes of computi

Answer 1

127 = 2⁷ - 1

It's the maximum positive value of an 8-bit signed integer, and so is a meaningful limit in file formats--it's the highest value you can store in a byte (on most systems) without making it unsigned.