[linux-audio-dev] Plugin APIs (again)

[Steve Harris]

On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 03:49:55PM +0100, David Olofson wrote:
> > Converting between continuous control and event control is not
> > reliable, and kinda removes the point of cont. control.
> 
> Yes, but without converters, you can't do things like applying audio 
> effects on controls...

Right, so I think its better to just ignore it. Where people want/need it
they will just use audio ports (like in LADSPA).
 
> Well, yeah - and if you can run hundreds of *those*, it probably 
> doesn't matter that every single synth voice spends more CPU time 
> processing control data than audio. :-)

Well, when people start writing audio rate DSP software that isn't full of
hacky optimisation and aproximations the audio rate stuff will be much
slower than the control rate stuff ;)
 
> Yes - but I'd rather not wait ten years before I can actually *use* 
> my software! :-)

I use audio rate control software now, it just limits the amount of
synthesis you can do on a modern machine from ludicrous to just excessive
:)
 
> In fact, I've already waited *more* than ten years already for PCs to 
> become at all usable for serious audio synthesis and recording. Now 
> they are, but since I didn't have Linux/lowlatency some years ago, I 
> never got around to write any hopelessly inefficient software that 
> would have been just fine today. ;-)

Really? I wrote some offline sysntesis software years ago (amiga and sun4)
that would run realtime now. Though theres no point porting it, it didn't
sound very good :) Thats more down to my lack of ability than anything
else. I bet there are people with old csound scores they can now run
realtime.

> > There are some hardware synths in existence today that use cont.
> > control and blockless processing. The improvement in sound quality
> > is noticable.
> 
> Do they use that for *everything* (like all parameters, switches 
> etc), or just where it actually matters?

The one I know most about has some controls that run at a reduced rate
(1/4). But everything is a stream, no events and no blocks.

- Steve