Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] LAAGA - how are we doing ?
From: Jim Peters (jim_AT_aguazul.demon.co.uk)
Date: Sun May 06 2001 - 12:08:42 EEST
Kai Vehmanen wrote:
> > I think we are going to have to talk about how applications are going
> > to get connected together once they have loaded their plugin into the
> > server.
>
> Like I said on one of my early LAAGA posts, I'd like to avoid
> talking about channels, busses or plugin networks when it comes to
> LAAGA ...
> :::
> In my desing, it's up to the server to care about which buffers are
> assigned to plugins, whether multiple plugins are assigned to same
> channels, whether input and output buffers are physically the same
> (=inplace), etc, etc ...
Yes, all of this is fine, but it doesn't address the question of how
things get connected together. A plugin loads itself up and says to
the server "Give me 5 channels", and gets five handles back (or
whatever), and starts writing to these - but what then ? How does
something connect to these channels to record this output ?
Can you talk me through a concrete example, as you see it ? Let's say
we have a MIDI synth engine that we want to record using `ardour'.
How do we get these two to talk to one another ?
These are the methods that I'm aware of so far:
The `bus' method might go something like this, at a guess: We startup
`ardour', which grabs busses 1-24 for recording. We startup the synth
engine and tell it to write to busses 3 and 4.
The `patchbay' method might go like this - we start up both the
applications, and labelled sockets for them appear on our patchbay.
We manually connect them up there with a virtual patch-lead.
The `flow graph' method might go like this - we start up both of them,
and module blocks appear on our flow graph view. We drag them around
and make connections between ports on them there.
I quite understand your wish to not get into a flow graph kind of
model, and keep the focus on interconnecting applications, but we have
to choose some model of how to manage the user-side view of how things
get connected because this impacts on the server and API design.
Jim
--
Jim Peters / __ | \ Aguazul
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