Re: [linux-audio-user] Midi app & Video app with SMPTE and/or MTC

On Wednesday 22 December 2004 06:58 pm, Brad Fuller wrote: The GUI is implemented but not the back end. Myself and another user spent a not insignificant amount of time diagnosing and testing the sync capability of MuSE before the developer who implemented it decided to let us in on the fact that it wasn't a complete implementation. Side Note to rest of list: I haven't mentioned this here yet, but it happened and... I know they're working on it, but... well... You'll begin to understand why I'm condescending sometimes, like right now. It's all a matter of public record, so I'll be kind. Flamers: I'm gone until at least Friday night, so figure I'll be back to humiliate you by Monday latest. Yer best bet? Go birddog some chicks and get yer aggression out in a healthy way. You won't care about me anymore. People who get it: Don't bother with the flamers, I can handle 'em and besides, nobody will care in 48 hours, so just let 'em rant and that should be humiliating enough where I can ignore them and do work instead. we now return you to our regular email, all ready in progress. -- Be that as it may, the 6 series is a total dog and it's just not going to cut it if you have any intention of using external synths. That is to say anything that isn't a MESS plugin, such as the wavetable on my soundcard or an external module. I know for a fact because I wasted about two and a half weeks cocking around trying to find out why it wasn't communicating with anything but the soft synths (which were broken because of changes in libtool, which meant I had ugatz (zero) to make noise. I don't know libtool, I have hardware, why should I have to tackle that learning curve for somebody else?). The only reason it took that long was I could not convince the developers it was a MuSE problem until I reluctantly made extensive unnecessary updates to several parts of the OS even though comparative analysis with ever other MIDI player on the platform supported my conclusion. Once _that_ was done, the developers could not reproduce the problem because they all use the softsynths and none of 'em had bone stock systems. I tried diffing CVS to pin down the introduction of breakage but due to some tomfoolery with CVS when they branched from 6 to 7, the actual commit that caused this breakage between 6.0 (seriously broken GUI) and 6.1 (seriously broken MIDI) was lost so trees had to be diffed "by hand". Long story short, the change that broke the MIDI output was due to a poor realtime memory allocation implementation in the thread that handles the _external_ MIDI, so the change was rolled back for a final 6 series maintenance release. Unfortunately, the timing stability is so horrendously hit or miss, that unless you're blazing a new path where things like tempo, rhythm or repeatability aren't important it's basically a boat anchor. I'd have mentioned it before but you didn't ask about usability and I try to answer the asked questions. Trashing somebody's program is also a good way to start a shitstorm and we've got plenty of that already. Anyway, they have a list archive (not searchable or easy to find). I can't say anything here that isn't going to piss off somebody so I'll just say it; Unfortunately, MuSE is a steaming pile of dogshit. It's got a lot of potential but the developer pool is just too small for it to be useful for production any time in the foreseeable future. Rosegarden4 is the sequencer that works, but it doesn't sync at all. IIRC they have a release pending, so maybe you'll get lucky, but if history is any indicator expect to spend some time getting a build before you can test it. Apologies for having two conversations at once, but you demonstrate a point that's a little too subtle for some people; It seemed like a good idea at the time to bring it up. The rest of this is the parallel track, so you can ignore it but, if you wouldn't mind terribly can you comment on the following question? If I saved you two weeks aggravation in a business context, would you think it was a valuable service? As in would that be an acceptable "cost of doing business" type of expense, like say insurance, but it was offset by reduced TCO as compared to proprietary systems. Regards, J --- Now I shall pontificate unto the rest of ye what knows who they are. Developers: Here is my experience. Which project is yours more like? Time spent as MuSE developer: Maybe 6-8 months Number of patches accepted (and I'm not a coder): 2 Number of releases during my time as a user: 4 Number of "unbuildable out of the box" releases: 4 Number of releases that didn't have major problems after build: 0 Number of platforms supported by app: 1 Reason I walked: Developer pool too small, developers too dense. Reason I started: App _looked_ pretty good, was fairly usable and was about as far along functionality wise as FGFS when I got into that which is to say, it goes, but it doesn't behave anywhere like the real deal. Time spent as FlightGear Flight sim developer (as in releases depended on me as a core developer designated by the project lead even though I don't code): 5+ years Number of patches accepted: "Several" but I approved incoming patches in my melieu (base package), so I've been on both ends of the deal. I was also responsible for insure the integrity of the licensing on contributions being ported from the freeware MS flightsim community (I made it an issue too, not the project lead. He thought I made a good catch to head off trouble later.) Number of releases during my time as a user: ~8 Number of unbuildable out of the box releases: 1 (point release same day) Number or releases that didn't have major problems after build: 7 Number of platforms supported by app/build system: EIGHT (8) probably more by now Number of people that came up to me as boothmiester at LWCE with plans to shrinkwrap FGFS and sell it without kicking back anything to the community: How many zeros in a bajillion? Number of people that got bitched out over it: 0 Reason I walked: I really don't care about planes too much. 9/11 related issues. Audio apps on linux reached usable state. Reason I started: I contributed because I wanted experience with OSS development. I figured I could get a decent job because of propaganda from ESR that said "if you know yer shit you don't need a degree". He neglected to mention he was talking about to working in the lab at the Uni where you dropped out of the CS program. So when I say things like "generally speaking the audio apps appear to have deficient build systems as part of their charm", it's not to be a dick, it's because I know things can be better from experience. What I've seen isn't the only effective way to do things, but none of this is new to me, so if yer gonna challenge me about who's the "true stoner" you better be Bob Frikkin' Marleys ghost. Peace and have a Merry Christmas