the major weakness in this setup for me is the
neccesity to render the
midi before mixing. At least that means all elements of the arrangement
agreed. this is part of the reason why i was interested in supporting
vst/i's on linux. whether you run them as a plugin, or as a standalone
sample-synced application under JACK, the goal is the same.
however, there is still the question of where the MIDI stream is
coming from that drives the instrument.
parts is problematic. Even aside from the fact that it
is not possible
to add tools to assist in organising parts so that the rendering
pipeline (including multiple audio->audio bounces etc) can be viewed or
stepped through in a History like fashion, global edits in Ardour would
not be reflected in Rosegarden, making rerendering potentially very
this lack of integration is the chief drawback to the model JACK has
brought us. its a real concern of mine.
*however*, please consider that ProTools began life without any MIDI
sequencing abilities, and is now the dominant tool in the audio
industry. Despite its dominance, many many many people prefer to use
other MIDI sequencers to handle the generative part of a piece and
then switch to ProTools later. They do this, they say, because of a
combination of preference for the UI of another sequencer and/or the
actual quality of the sequencer aspects of PT.
so, although I am seriously concerned about integrating MIDI
sequencing, editing and real-time MIDI-driven synthesis in ardour, i
am not concerned in the sense that i think its an absolute
requirement. it will be great when we get it to that point, but even
when we do, there will be people who will still choose to use
rosgarden or muse or seq24 or other tools for organizing their MIDI
stuff.
Despite your comment about the
'mega-application', both Rosegarden and
Ardour aim to be such things, but dont, at the current time, appear to
do anything that the 2 apps you mentioned cant.
Please see
ardour.org/status.html for the roadmap.
--p