Re: MusicDevice instrumentIDs and presets
Re: MusicDevice instrumentIDs and presets
- Subject: Re: MusicDevice instrumentIDs and presets
- From: Bill Stewart <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 20:09:48 -0700
Most of the existing synths today do not support the concept of
instruments or multi-timbral - essentially this is done by the user to
have to have multiple instances of a synth unit open, and the host
provides the services for mapping selectors for setting different
patches.. This makes the synth itself a bit easier to write, as it just
manages its current, single inst, state, and puts a burden on the host
to provide the flexibility, etc of managing the different presets,
libraries, etc...
All well and good...
(Just gathering my thoughts here!)
So - I think the general rule (as with any other property) should also
be applied to this problem, with the instrument Count property... As
Chris outlined, for synths that don't support this concept, their
instrument count would be zero.. For synths that do, then hosts should
listen to it! :) This can and will change...
The "implication" I think of a synth unit supporting instruments is
that it provides the instrumentIDs for selecting particular
instruments.. Think of a DLS bank - these ID's are hard coded into the
bank itself. We would not expect a negotiation to occur between a host
and a unit with regards to instrument ID's - In the situation you
describe I would expect that the AU's-UI to do (as you say) most of the
work and the host receives its "instructions" - of course it can do its
own remapping on top of this, but it should send to the synth what the
synth reports to it.
However, when the user does change an instrument as you outline, the AU
will need to issue a property change for not only this instrument count
property but also other properties (instrument names for one and some
others that we'll detail when we can, but we'd probably use some kind
of extensible mark up language to describe patch name lists and MIDI
channel capabilities - guess we better get working on that :)
Its a good point - we'll have to make sure this behaviour is defined...
Who's volunteering to write the synth that lets me (the user) do this?
Bill
On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 12:41 AM, Jeremy Sagan wrote:
On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 05:56 PM, Philippe Wicker wrote:
This discussion leads me to ask a corollary question. Some kind of
MusicDevices will allow the user to build instruments and banks "on
the fly" (I think about soft sample players). The user may - will
-want to listen to the result in "real time" without first saving its
new program (instrument) then the instrument in a bank and the whole
thing in a preset and finally reload this preset in the host. When
working with a real (hardware) sample player, you can load, add,
remove, edit samples/instruments and hear the immediate result while
sounds are played. It would be nice if such a behavior was available
with any "AU compliant" host. Most of - if not all - this work is to
be done on the AU side, but as soon as a new instrument is created by
the user - by the mean of the AU custom UI - the host could reflect
this change in its own UI (eg the menu(s) to select instrument/midi
channel). Do you think that hosts should be required (or maybe we
could talk of hosts UI design guidelines) to listen to some
parameter/property to achieve that?
Yes, that would be very cool. I would definitely be a listener!
Jeremy
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