Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] VST link (open?)
From: Phil (phil_AT_publishers-market.com)
Date: Wed Jan 23 2002 - 13:36:31 EET
> Paul Davis wrote:
> anything based on MIDI is clearly completely unacceptable for a
> general control protocol. the data resolution is too small if you
> stick with 7 bit values; with 14 bit values, there are some
> *hellacious* parsing problems that were clearly not thought out at the
> time that Sequential, Yamaha and others were defining MIDI. this has
> been long accepted in the "academic" music world, where the
> limitations of MIDI have been clear for a long time.
>
> if you look at any of the existing plugin APIs, they all use 32 bit
> floating point values (some of them normalize the values to a -1..+1
> range) for control data. MIDI can't handle this well at all.
DMIDI isn't limited to 7 bit values though, MIDI is. Using the device
id byte you can set the data block to whatever precision you want, 24
bit, 32 bit, 48 bit, 96 bit (I start to run into problems at about
60,000 bit). I've been working on the nodeid/output device section over
the last week and i think i've a clean separation between 7 bit data and
other formats. This would break the link between MIDI and DMIDI for
big-bit applications and this isn't what I wanted though, but it may be
an acceptable trade-off for the increased control granularity. The
idea's aren't 100% finalised as I'm in the middle of moving to a
different country and my hardware is all packed up, but it looks ok.
But whether we like it or not we are stuck with dealing with legacy
hardware that run's on 7 bit resolution for a long time. Ok, app-to-app
communication should use the highest bit count it can for data, but if
you want to control it from MIDI hardware, and I really prefer to ride
real faders over virtual, it's back down to 7 bits.
Phil
-- Phil Kerr Operations Publishers Market AG Lindwurmstr. 129a D-80337 Muenchen T: +49 (0)89-7299750 - F: +49 (0)89-72997599 - E: phil_AT_publishers-market.comThere are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third way works.
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