[alsa-devel] Rawmidi vs. /dev/snd/*

In writing an embedded app that will be the only thing talking to MIDI, and in which I don't need any timing or routing capability, is there any reason to use ALSA Rawmidi, as opposed to merely reading and writing the device via the file system? Which is the lower-level, and therefore most efficient, interface? I'm leaning toward the latter, because I already know how to use poll() to wait for incoming data on multiple input devices, but I don't see how to do that via Rawmidi.