[LAU] multiple outputs for drumkv1

[Brent Busby]

I was going to send a feature request to Rui Capela author of drumkv1 
(and of course, Qtractor!), but I wondered if anyone else would also 
like this.

It'd be nice if drumkv1 supported optional Jack outputs per instrument, 
selectable with a toggle at the instrument level.  The reason is as 
follows:

Normally if you want sampled drums on Linux, you have three main 
choices.  You can go with Hydrogen, which has multiple outputs per 
instrument, but it's a big thick program with a sequencer that's 
currently not as powerful as Muse or Seq24 (or just about anything). 
The plus side:  Hydrogen lets you tweak the parameters of your 
instruments in-program from the GUI, for pitch, ADSR, etc.

Or you can create a SoundFont and run FluidSynth.  This too has multiple 
outputs, but you can't do much tweaking at the instrument level once 
you've created it in Swami and saved it.  Your SoundFont pretty much 
becomes a "rompler" for computers.

Or you can run drumkv1...which has more flexibility in changing the 
sound of your instruments than even Hydrogen, will let you use whatever 
powerful sequencer you want to drive it...but doesn't do multiple 
outputs.  Doh!

Basically, if drumkv1 could create per instrument outputs, you'd have it 
all.  I often like to send drum sounds back to my hardware mixer for 
more processing in the phsyical world, then record again as another 
track.

Also, the problem with the way Hydrogen does this is that it's either 
completely on or completely off -- if you turn on the toggle in Hydrogen 
for instrument outs, every single instrument in your drumset gets its 
own Jack output whether you want it or not.  Also, even the mono samples 
get a left and a right stereo out.  Usually it's overkill, because I'm 
usually not taking every single output to the mixer for processing.  I 
don't know if having all those outputs on every instrument adds any 
extra work for the computer or Jack to do, but it does at the very least 
make Hydrogen show up in QJackCtl with a list of outputs that goes on 
forever.  Usually I just want six or seven at most!

It'd be nice if on each instrument in drumkv1 had a toggle that says 
you'd like to have a Jack output just for that sound.  If it's a mono 
sound, it could be a single mono output.  If you want to turn that on 
for every sound in a 30-instrument drumkit, you could...but you probably 
won't...so this way it doesn't waste resources giving you more jacks 
than you're actually needing.

I wondered if there were any comments on this.  Also, I think I've seen 
Rui Capela on here before, so he may actually be reading this anyway.