Subject: Re: my take on the "virtual studio" (monolith vs plugins) ... was Re: [linux-audio-dev] ardour, LADSPA, a marriage
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Tue Nov 21 2000 - 00:14:05 EET
>> Without these characteristics, my "virtual studio" idea cannot be implemente
>d.
>>
>> (You know: all "applications" runs as "plugins" of a main host, which
>> never never never blocks (*) (mark the last 4 words .... ) )
>
>There might be some work to do on never blocking. For instance, currently
>making a connection from inside artsd to the outside world involves seeing
>if the outside world is still there (which means, blocking lookup).
>Threading could be used solve this, or other (state-machine-driven)
>approaches.
well, here we come to the crux of things. if MCOP can really be used
in applications that seek to offer the same kind of performance as
dedicated h/w boxes, then i'm all for learning it and using it. i
really shouldn't say much more than that, but i have this sneaking
suspicion that MCOP comes from a view of the audio world filled with
tools like xmms, trackers, MIDI sequencers, etc.
this is a different world than the one filled with 3.5msec latency
real-time FX boxes, 24 simultaneous channel HDR systems and so
on, soundfile editors that can deal with a 10GB recording (yes, i did
mean to write GB), and so on.
Stefan is probably right that MCOP could be improved/extended to
handle such systems. But I suspect there is real work there, work that
is not guaranteed to result in a version of MCOP that can still be
considered universal in its utility. if stefan really believes that
the fixes for this are fairly trivial superficial details, i'm very
interested to know more. but i also know that to date, every time i
have looked at other linux audio software, i have found assumptions
and world-models that make them unsuitable for use in live, real-time,
low latency situations and/or situations working with hardware that is
anything other than a consumer soundcard and/or situations that make
it unsuitable for use with other pro-audio h/w.
if MCOP isn't limited by these things, Stefan, please tell us more, or
point us (accurately) to some documentation on the API and its
capabilities, since it seems like something that we should all know
about.
--p
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