[LAU] Whysynth and MIDI channels

Nick Copeland nickycopeland at hotmail.com
Wed May 30 13:30:52 EDT 2007


>This sort of examples is complety useless and easily negated. When you
>measure the size of some object, do you start from the 0 or the 1 on your
>ruler ?
>

Nice. Just put that in your manual and see if it makes sense - get your 
ruler out and measure the number of channels? You have lost the point here: 
how is a user really supposed to know that MIDI channels should be counted 
from 1 or from 0? Are you expecting a user to understand that MIDI reserves 
4 bits for channel selection therefore to reach 16 they must have been 
counted from zero. That is a stupid assumption - if more bits were available 
then even as a programmer I could well understand that channel zero be 
reserved to indicate 'isolated' and still reach channel 16, which to me 
would seem quite reasonable.

>The 'connect everything to
>everything' trick breaks down once you have more than two things to 
>connect.

Why is that wrong? That would sound pretty much lilke a MIDI mixer function, 
and why should that not be done by default? Why do you think this 'trick' 
breaks down (it isn't a trick BTW)? MOTU has made millions selling hardware 
to do just this (and admittedly more). In fact MIDI was build this was to 
allow for layering between different synths allocated to the same channel - 
far from breaking down this actually enriches the capabilities of my 
installation. You are well of the mark my friend.

>If you have a keyboard and a synth you run a MIDI cable between them. Most
>people are smart enough to know this. It also allows you to play your synth
>on your keyboard, and not be disturbed when I sit down beside you and 
>switch
>on my keyboard and synth. Just imagine it were different.

Just imagine it were different - you just connect your MIDI master keyboard 
to your synth and it works. Amazing. Just imagine that. Rather than having 
to check whether the master keyboard and synth are on the same channel and 
that the synth and master keyboard have the same concept of channel 
numbering. Sorry mate, OMNI was designed to allow products to interoperate 
with minimal intervention but more on this below - attach the cable and they 
work due to defaulting to OMNI, why is this not done with Unix softsynths?

>Dumbing down everything is never a good idea.

Agreed, but this looks again like you have missed the point. What does this 
proposal have to do with dumbing down? It has not proposed simplifying 
anything, that would have been dumbing down. On the contrary the proposal is 
to have a more considerate set of defaults. As stated in my submit, that you 
seem to have read rather lightly, this does not affect the complexities 
required of a user - in the current situation the default is no connnection 
and you have to build the ones you want. In the proposed case you would need 
to use the MIDI connection tools to break the default OMIN connection before 
building new specific ones that you require. If it makes you feel any more 
'highbrow' it actually makes things more difficult for you as a knowledgable 
user, which seems to be what you are after. In addition to that it makes 
things almost infinately simpler for someone who does not want to read 50 
README files for different applications built by pedantic developers.

Regards,

N.

>
>--
>FA
>
>Follie! Follie! Delirio vano è questo !
>
>
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