[OT] Mutitimbral - philosophy
[OT] Mutitimbral - philosophy
- Subject: [OT] Mutitimbral - philosophy
- From: James Chandler Jr <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 02:37:06 -0700
(Renamed [OT] in case this is wandering too far from list interests)
On Wednesday, July 16, 2003, at 01:38 PM, Brian Willoughby wrote:
If there is a way to accomplish something complex by combining multiple
MusicDevices, then I believe that the MusicDevice specification should
not be
complicated by adding these abilities at the individual MD level. All
of the
features that people are suggesting or requiring are valid, but they
can be
handled by the application, and would even encourage more distinction
among
different applications. Power users might not want the "ease" of
dropping in a
16-channel multitimbral device, while most "normal" users would. This
allows
for applications that are geared towards their user base.
Hi Brian
Good points.
The old QT Music Instruments work similar to multiple instances of a
monotimbral device (and still works pretty well). To emulate a GM synth
in QT Music, one must instantiate 16 instruments, and manually map MIDI
channels into the instances. It wouldn't be the end of the world if
host software was required to do hidden gyrations for multitimbral
softsynth support. It would be about the same procedure as QT Music
Instruments.
That said, the function MusicDeviceMIDIEvent(), accepts a channelized
inStatus parameter, implicitly making multitimbral MusicDevices
"legal"? Looks like multitimbral is already in the spec.
MusicDeviceMIDIEvent() would have to be deprecated or redefined to make
multitimbral "illegal"?
If the only reason for complicating the MusicDevice spec with
multitimbral
features is to improve the user experience, then I say we do not need
this.
Let the application developers distinguish their product. ... or, some
developers can release libraries or frameworks which implement
commonly needed
behavior.
A user has reasonable expectation that a hardware synth will work about
the same with any MIDI software. None of my MIDI synths are "obsolete".
The oldest synths still work great with the newest MIDI sequencers.
It might discourage sales if a softsynth only works properly with a
small subset of hosts? Or a host only works with a small subset of
softsynths? Its bad enough knowing that system software updates will
soon enough kill off softsynth and sequencer investments.
Wonder if any current or soon-to-be-released multitimbral MusicDevices,
can optionally run standalone via virtual MIDI ports? This was a common
feature in Pre-OSX softsynths.
If commercial OSX softsynths do not typically support standalone
operation via virtual MIDI ports, somebody might make some money
selling a simple VirtualMIDIPort MusicDevice host?
Might make softsynths "generically useful" from a wider assortment of
MIDI software?
James Chandler Jr.
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