[linux-audio-dev] Additional LADSPA hints

[David Olofson]

On Wednesday 15 January 2003 19.13, Steve Harris wrote:
> There have been a few suggestions recently, I'l try to summarise
> them for comment.
>
> MOMENTARY. A hint to suggest that a control should behave like a
> momentary switch, eg. on for as long as the user holds down the
> key/mouse button/whatever. Useful for reset or sync controls for
> example. Would be useful in the DJ flanger. Only applies to TOGGLED
> controls.

This sounds like a nice, clean and useful feature.


> AUDIO_RATE_CONTROL. Hints than an audio control should/could be
> controlled by a high time res. slider or control data, but
> shouldn't be connected to the next audio signal by default. I can't
> think of any simple examples off hand, but combined with MOMENTARY
> it could be used for sample accurate tempo tapping.

I'm not sure... What does it *really* mean? Sure, "this is an audio 
rate control" - but that only suggests to hosts that it *might* be a 
bad idea to assume that it should be connected to an audio port... 

Considering the sidechain deal, this *idea* seems useful - but 
sidechains are *not* control ports, so this would still be the wrong 
tool for that job, the way I understand it. Some other hint would 
have to be used for that, and preferably one that's less specific 
than "SIDECHAIN".


> RANDOMISABLE. Hints that its useful/meaningful to randomise the
> port if the user hits a button. This is useful for the steps of
> control sequencers, reverbs, and just about anything that's
> complex. Allows you to specify which controls can be randomised
> without anything too supprising happening to the user (eg. sudden
> +100dB gain would be unpleasent).

That sound cool, although I'm not a great fan of random control data 
myself.

<rant>
I'd rather record the "random" data, so I can edit it if needed, and 
be sure that it'll always sound the same every time I play the song. 
I get nervous otherwise! ;-) And I've had some bad experiences with 
noise generators and resonant filters... In Audiality, I decided to 
reset the NG before rendering each waveform, to guarantee that a 
certain script always generates the exact same waveform.
</rant>


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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