Re: [Om-synth] DSSI synths

[Dave Robillard]

Michael wrote:

>On 07/07/05 20:22:07, Lars Luthman wrote:
>> On Thu, 2005-07-07 at 12:23 +0000, Michael wrote:
>> > I've noticed that the DSSI plugins like XSynth and Fluidsynth do  
>> not
>> 
>> > have any trigger or sync inputs. So I was wondering how one is
>> supposed
>> > to send any signals to them.
>> 
>> DSSI uses MIDI for things like that. If you have a DSSI plugin in a
>> patch (and the plugin implements run_synth(), which I think all
>> available DSSI plugins do) you should get an ALSA MIDI input port for
>> that patch. If you connect a MIDI source such as a sequencer or
>> keyboard
>> to that port you should be able to play the DSSI synth.
>
>Yes that worked thanks. I noticed that only on port shows with the name 
 
>of the patch even if multiple plugins are selected. Is there a limit to 
 
>the number of DSSI plugins that I can select per patch?

No, you can have any number.  The MIDI for the patch will go to every 
DSSI plugin.

Eventually I hope to have a MIDI input node, much like the audio input 
node; so you will be able to patch up MIDI to whatever you want, just 
as you can with audio.

The problem is we don't yet have a plugin standard that can actually 
output MIDI, so there's not really much justification in me doing the 
work to allow MIDI patching when there's not really anything you can do 
with it.

I may make a plugin standard that can handle MIDI (or OSC, or 
whatever), in which case I'll do the MIDI patching, because you'll be 
able to do fun things like have arpeggiator plugins, transpose plugins, 
quantize, etc. etc.

I /really/ want this functionality, and I have for a long time, so it 
will come eventually.  Creating a plugin standard isn't the easiest 
thing to do though, especially once it gets mentioned on LAD and the 
wars start.

Now that Jack has (well, is getting) MIDI support, and OSC will follow, 
I think the time is ripe for such a thing.  I'll probably follow Jack's 
implementation very closely (as far as having generic byte streams on 
top of which MIDI and OSC are built), to make things as simple as 
possible.

I'm really interested in any thoughts in this area, if anyone has 
ideas..

-DR-