Re: [iiwusynth-devel] Optimization

[Peter Hanappe]

On Wed, 2002-02-20 at 22:14, Josh Green wrote:
> On Wed, 2002-02-20 at 08:49, Peter Hanappe wrote:
> > 
> > I was thinking of adding support for the LADSPA plugins to iiwusynth. It
> > is not high on my priority list but it  would make it easy to add new
> > master effects to the synthesizer while keeping the synth coherent with
> > the soundfont specifications. Have you considered turning your equalizer
> > into a LADSPA plugin?
> > 

Hey Josh!

Evolution has played a trick on me! I started writing my reply on your
mail however I didn't finish and had to concentrate on something else.
So I saved the mail to be send later. Somehow Evolution decided to send
it without my acknowledgement! I'll pick it up where I left it (you
already received some part of it)

> I've also been thinking a lot about LADSPA and JACK support for
> iiwusynth. Makes it real convenient to plug iiwusynth into an effect
> chain etc. On a somewhat related note; I'm trying to get an idea of how
> Smurf will deal with audio and MIDI in conjunction with iiwusynth. Any
> thoughts of how this should be handled?

There is a JACK driver in CVS. If you have JACK installed, configure
should detect it (it doesn't use the config or something system used by
Paul Davis).

Also, I started to make a LADSPA plugin for the synthesizer. The work's
not finished but you can find it in the iiwusynth/bindings/ladspa
directory. Most plugin hosts seem to like only mono-audio-in to
mono-audio-out plugins. That's why I haven't tested it yet.

ecasound should be able to handle it though.


> I'm thinking that iiwusynth will probably be the primarily used
> wavetable device for Smurf, but I'm going to have support for other
> things as well (Takashi Iwai's OSS AWE 32/64/Live based driver) and
> would also like to have audio input support for recording samples
> directly to Smurf.

Well, I must say that I find the JACK project very promising. It still
isn't really stable yet (the first version I downloaded completely
frooze my linux box; the second version worked fine; I can't connect to
the jackd server in the latest version). However, with JACK, adding
audio input is a piece of cake. 

Having support for recording samples is also something I thought off. I
would be nice in a live setup, where for example the drummer records a
loop, and immediately reuses it as a sample.

> It would be nice to be able to just configure iiwusynth to use its own
> audio/MIDI driver plugins for output and be able to interface to them
> easily (perhaps add audio input support?) 

Thru jack maybe? 

> Or, since I am already going
> to have an audio/MIDI plugin driver system for Smurf for the cases when
> it isn't used with iiwusynth, perhaps I should just use it instead. This
> seems kind of a shame though, so perhaps using a combination of Smurf
> drivers and iiwusynth drivers.. 

I think the ALSA sequencer interface is the solution here. From smurf
you could programmatically (!) make a connection from the smurf midi
output to the synth's midi input. In addition, other MIDI programs can 
connect as well. I think it's okay for Smurf to have its alsa_seq driver
and for the iiwusynth to have its alsa_seq driver (you wrote it anyway!)

> Anyways. If you have any ideas of how
> this could be handled, I would like to hear them :)
> Development is coming along. Slower than I would like, as usual. But its
> getting there. Smurf now starts up again, and most of the user interface
> elements are falling back into place (all GTKObjectified and built on
> top of the new GObject based libsmurf and libsoundfont library). The
> foundation for the new Smurf is going to allow for some really cool
> things, is what I keep telling myself, since I'm really just doing an
> overhaul and progress isn't always so apparent.

Maybe I should take a day to hack the soundfont interface I use in the
iiwusynth. I'd like to give you a more concrete example of how I would
interface iiwusynth with smurf. 

Cheers! (Are you still on the road with your laptop?)

Peter

> Cheers!
>       Josh Green
> 
>