On Monday 09 December 2002 15.29, Steve Harris wrote:
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 02:31:24PM +0100, David
Olofson wrote:
[audio rate controls]
Well, ok. You can have those *too*. (I'm
Santa! :-)
Well, you can obviously "have" them, but I dont think you want to
have sophisticated support for both. That would make the API
bloaty, and only nuts like me actually use audio rate control in
2002.
Where's the bloat? We need audio ports anyway, right?
Converting between continuous control and event
control is not
reliable, and kinda removes the point of cont. control.
Yes, but without converters, you can't do things like applying audio
effects on controls...
I look forward to a few years where all DSP code can
run
blockless and with audio rate (or near audio rate) control.
Have you considered that timestamped events may actually have
*better* than sample accurate timing...? ;-) (Well, I actually
suspect that subsample accurate timing will show up sooner or
later - as a buzword or because it actually matters. Maybe we
should allocate some bits for it while we're at it?)
I dont think its meaningful. At least not efficiently. I't be a
better use of cycles (and devloper time) to just run the whole
thing at 96k IMNSHO.
Yes, but that's only one bit per sample. Is that sufficient for the
most extreme accuracy nuts?
Anyway, no I don't think there would be much point in messing this,
at least not until we've actually seen it in use, and understand
better *why* it's used.
[...]
I don't
think that DSPs or generic CPUs will *ever* be fast
enough that you can completely stop worrying about performance.
You think convolution is heavy stuff? Wait until you see what the
cutting edge
Hey, I've never though that you can forget about performance, its
just that the cost of things like blockless processing and
contonuous control get lost in the noise when you start throwing RT
convolvers around.
Well, yeah - and if you can run hundreds of *those*, it probably
doesn't matter that every single synth voice spends more CPU time
processing control data than audio. :-)
And aynway statments like "CPUs will *ever* be
fast enough"... are
usually proven false later ;)
Yes - but I'd rather not wait ten years before I can actually *use*
my software! :-)
In fact, I've already waited *more* than ten years already for PCs to
become at all usable for serious audio synthesis and recording. Now
they are, but since I didn't have Linux/lowlatency some years ago, I
never got around to write any hopelessly inefficient software that
would have been just fine today. ;-)
There are some hardware synths in existence today that
use cont.
control and blockless processing. The improvement in sound quality
is noticable.
Do they use that for *everything* (like all parameters, switches
etc), or just where it actually matters?
//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate
.- The Return of Audiality! --------------------------------.
| Free/Open Source Audio Engine for use in Games or Studio. |
| RT and off-line synth. Scripting. Sample accurate timing. |
`--------------------------->
http://olofson.net/audiality -'
.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| The Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
`---------------------------->
http://www.linuxdj.com/maia -'
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