[LAD] [LAU] Ardour MIDI tracer

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 2014-08-16 at 03:00 -0400, Tim E. Real wrote:
> One can use the pitch wheel for something other than pitch.
> It is per-channel. You can have up to 16 14-bit pitch wheels 
>  (or knobs/sliders/etc), per interface, each routed to whatever you
> want.
> 
> You would just have to reserve some channels, or even a whole
> interface.

It's wise to use several interfaces, even when using 16 channels only
for averaged instrument playing MIDI events. However, I want to chime in
to mention an issue, you perhaps miss. When sending pitch bend MIDI
data, you likely will hear it in the audio signal. For my RME PCIe card
I can hear mouse movements and MIDI pitch bend usage in the audio
signal, if I send other MIDI events, e.g. much modulation wheel data
it's audible too, but pitch bend by it's nature sends much data and most
of it likely is unused data. At sane levels my sound card doesn't
produce audible hiss caused by it's analog components, but there always
is much audible digital noise, even when the computer is idle. I guess
it was less loud when I used another PCIe slot, but there always is loud
audible digital noise what ever slot I use. I experience/d the same with
my TerraTec PCI cards on this machine and with my old mobo. IOW since
Len wants to design a mixer control for usage with averaged computers
and sound cards, it might be worth to keep in mind that everything that
makes the computer work much, likely will be audible as noise in the
audio signal. 128 steps for a fader are too less steps, but perhaps 256
or 512 already are enough.