[linux-audio-dev] Project: modular synth editor

[Mike Rawes]

 --- Iain Duncan <iainduncan at telus.net> wrote: > 
> > This is what AMS, SSM, gAlan, PD etc let you do right now - MIDI is
> converted
> > to a 'voltage' signal (by various means) and then routed to plugins in the
> > graph. Ditto JACK - you can connect a JACK port to anything you like in
> these
> > apps.
> 
> I don't know near enough to say it should be Jack specifically that does the
> inter-app passing of control signals. But my point is that *midi converted
> to a signal* is insufficient. Midi is low depth low sample rate ( or baud in
> this case ) totally impractical as say the input source on a filters CV in
> case you wanted really tight envelopes. 

Absolutely - you don't have to use MIDI, but thats how MIDI is typically dealt
with in existing modulars, so that existing hardware and sequencers can be used
to control them. Think of it as 'backwards compatibility'.

> I'd like to see one module able to
> generate a high res signal in some cool manner that can then be used for
> whatever strikes my fancy, without worrying about the signal being too
> coarse for my selected job. Or many modules each working one one signal that
> in the very end goes into a filter cutoff plug. 

You can do this already in all the modulars discussed! It's the default
behaviour - they all use internal buffers (32 bit floats, giving 25bit
resolution) for routing between plugins - if you want to send any signal
between two or more apps, you can use JACK. It works!

> So say a user wants to
> sequence something from midi, they could *start* the signal as 7 bit, but
> once it's in the signal path it gets upped to 24 or 32 by audio sample rate
> so that as it goes through envelopes, lfos, sample and holds, mixers, etc,
> etc, we aren't processing a low quality signal. ( I hope I'm making some
> kinda sense here. )

Perfect sense. What I don't get is why you think this cannot be done with
existing software....

e.g.:

Rosegarden o-(MIDI)-> SSM ---(JACK)-o
           |            |           |
           |          (JACK)        |
           |            |            \
           o-(MIDI)-> gAlan -(JACK)---> AMS -(JACK)-> JackRack ... 
           |                         /
           o-(MIDI)-> AMS ---(JACK)-o

... can be done!

- 
Myk


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