[linux-audio-dev] [ANN] WhySynth DSSI softsynth

[Sean Bolton]

On Oct 9, 2005, at 11:18 AM, Jens M Andreasen wrote:
> Let Bolton speak for himself, please. Gentlemen please ...

Bolton speaks for himself, thusly:

On Oct 8, 2005, at 10:30 PM, Jens M Andreasen wrote:
> Whoaa!
>
> Some really impressive specs. Are you trying to corner the market as in
> "the only soffsynth you'll ever, ever need!!" :)

Right-o, as in Guinness is the only beer you'll ever, ever need,
and Gentoo is the only distro you'll ever, ever need!!

> Do you have some rough statistics on number of voices/gigahertz?

That depends on the patch. With a simple two-oscillator, single filter
patch playing 16 voices, my 933MHz Pentium 3 barely breaks a sweat
(17% CPU according to top, 22% according to qjackctl).  One the other
hand, with the most expensive patch I can think of, it maxes out at
only two voices.

On Oct 9, 2005, at 3:33 AM, Jens M Andreasen wrote:
>> WhySynth, as in (I sometimes ask), "_why_ am I working on another
>> softsynth instead of on paying gigs?" (Following my bliss?
>> Addiction? One last shot at misspent youth?)
>
> Heh :) Once you have done one, you are addicted.
>
> This is not nescessarily a  bad thing. Laying out a synthesizer 
> requires
> as much consideration as laying out say; the main theme for film-score.
> A few cycles of scrapping and reinventing is expected, perhaps even
> required.

Yeah, addicted is right.  I code in a very experimental, improvisational
way.  If I could manage only a _few_ cycles of scrapping and 
reinventing,
I would be much more efficient!

On Oct 9, 2005, at 8:45 AM, derek holzer wrote:
> Very nice, hours of fun in there to be sure. But how can you handle 
> MIDI bindings? For example, to control one of the filter resonance 
> knobs rather than just the MIDI note/pitchwheel in?

That's one of the things I haven't done yet, and one of the awkward
parts of DSSI.  Several people (two?) have pointed out that DSSI
provides for binding MIDI CCs/NRPNs to ports ('knobs'), but the plugin
must declare these bindings to the host before the GUI gets a chance
to run.  So you either have to make them hard-coded, or require
the user to exit-and-restart in order to implement custom bindings.
If you wanna hard-code your own bindings, I'll tell you how....
(Just look in src/dssp_synth.c for the Y_PORT_GLIDE_TIME binding
to the MIDI portamento time CC, follow the example, and recompile :-/)

Thanks, everyone, for your comments and questions,

-Sean