[LAD] No nagging, a serious question

Ralf Mardorf ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net
Sun Jul 4 19:39:06 UTC 2010


I once did a MIDI extension for SpeechBasic to program a real time MIDI
sound sampler on BASIC for the C64, for example

$1810 LDA $DEO6
$1813 LSR
$1814 BCC $1810
$1816 LDA $DE07; read MIDI event byte, usually followed by RTS

This are 6 bytes of code, to get a MIDI data byte from the UART.
I did an experiment by the signature that makes Adrian going wild.
Some lines for a signature are spam and I do agree.

How many lines of code are used by ALSA MIDI to do the same? Lets say
not per USB, but PCI.

I wonder if MIDI on Linux could become better and if audio could need
less resources when for Linux audio and MIDI, the concept might vary to
the usual Linux concept.

Some very elaborate Mac and Win audio apps do not need much resources or
much bytes.

I hope at least one person would understand that I'm not nagging. I try
to understand Linux code, but it's very long and hard to understand, not
comparable with the 4 lines above or even not comparable to longer code
for professional Atari sequencers.

Is there really a reason, I might not understand, to make Linux audio
that complicated?

Please, I guess some will write that I'm the only one having issues with
ALSA MIDI and JACK, but c'mon ;) ...

Cheers!

Ralf

PS: Latest ALSA MIDI latency tests fortunately did show that USB most
times is useless, see also the 64 Studio lists archives, but PCI MIDI
most times seems to be very good. Perhaps, if you should agree, there
could be an advice on Linux audio web sides to prefer PCI MIDI.




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