Re: [fluid-dev] Re: two or more notes simultaneously

[David McNab]

Joe Corneli wrote:
>   Just fire off several 'noteon' commands in quick succession.
>   If you're hearing any discernible delay, check your software for speed.
>
> Well, "discernible" is a relative term.  I wouldn't trust my life to
> two noteon commands fired in quick succession even if I had the
> world's fastest personal computer.

Worth noting that the raw MIDI protocol itself has no provision for 
simultaneous notes - playing a 7-note chord causes 7 separate NoteOn 
packets to be sent, one after the other, yet musicians and their 
audiences are generally happy with this.

It's not an issue of whether there's a delay in the noteon events, 
whether the events are stdin/socket commands to fluidsynth, ALSA API 
calls, or raw MIDI packets. The issue is more one of how *long* the 
delay is.

A tripletted hemidemisemiquaver at 120 bps has a duration of 21 
milliseconds. You don't get a lot of notes this short in most music, 
save for some clusters of grace notes, which are usually played 
monophonically. It takes a damn fine musician to get anywhere near this 
speed, let alone beat-perfect.

So delay probably starts to become discernible if much more than (say) 3 
milliseconds elapse between the first and the last noteon.

Conclusion - don't worry. You're building music for human, not computer, 
ears. Just as 25-20 frames/sec suffices for most people watching movies, 
small delays in musical notes will go completely unnoticed.

Cheers
David