[linux-audio-dev] Re: Synth APIs, pitch control

Sami P Perttu perttu at cc.helsinki.fi
Fri Dec 13 04:48:00 UTC 2002


On 12 Dec 2002, nick wrote:

> > > http://amsynthe.sourceforge.net/amp_plugin.h which i am still toying
> >
> My whole idea with it was to make it as simple as possible. Bearing in
> mind that many people have learned MIDI already, it makes sense to me to
> use it. Another cool thing is that you could in theory write a sequencer
> as a plugin for it - since it can output midi data as it wishes. Other
> plugins such as midi arpeggiators could easily be written. All the
> timing is catered for since you know the number of frames elapsed in
> this process_**() call.

Even as a control language MIDI has a lot of shortcomings that it's time
to get rid of: note pitch values, low precision most everywhere. We might
as well design a format ourselves. XAP can probably accommodate simple
"musical" plugins but we really need another plugin system for the
sequencer... like you, I would really like to have something that is
usable yesterday but it's not going to happen, sigh.

> Also I find the whole notion of 'ports' just complicates the whole issue
> - the plugin is simply a piece of DSP code which processes buffer(s) of
> audio data. why is anything more than a pointer needed for this?

Ports could support a pull model where plugins request data when they want
it. Imagine a granular synthesizer that has, say, 16 audio ports that it
uses to render grains.

--
Sami Perttu                       "Flower chase the sunshine"
Sami.Perttu at hiit.fi               http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/perttu





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