Re: [iiwusynth-devel] Optimization

[Josh Green]

On Sat, 2002-02-23 at 18:27, Peter Hanappe wrote:
> 
> 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)
> 

He he.. I use evolution too. I haven't had that happen yet though :)

> 
> 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.
> 

I guess my main question was, how is the audio data going to be output
from iiwusynth when I use it as a plugin to Swami (next generation
Smurf). Since I'm going to be using the audio in Swami for things like
active loop setting, listening to audio files in the sample open file
browser window, recording samples, etc. I was wondering if Swami should
handle all my audio needs and there be some sort of callback function
attached to iiwusynth that delivers the audio which I can then do with
as I please? Or should we try to implement all this audio functionality
into iiwusynth? It would seem hard to co-ordinate things if both Swami
and iiwusynth are using separate audio interfaces. I'm not quite at this
stage yet, so no hurry.

> > 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? 
> 

I was thinking more for recording samples from within Swami, so more
like support for the various audio drivers (OSS and ALSA) for audio
input.

> > 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!)
> 

Perhaps, but it might be nice to just directly sequence iiwusynth from
Swami (so if someone doesn't have ALSA they can still use it, say in
other OSes?) In the case where ALSA sequencer support is available a
port could be created for iiwusynth so it could also easily be sequenced
from other programs. BTW, I was thinking that the ALSA sequencer driver
should probably be the default, when available?

> 
> 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. 
> 

My thought was that we were going to use libsoundfont as a basis for
iiwusynth? It will need a little work to make it as portable as
iiwusynth, but I think it would be worth it. There would be a lot of
flexibility added to iiwusynth and the communication between Swami and
iiwusynth would be fairly straight forward. Still need to resolve
multi-thread locking issues with libsoundfont, and it hasn't been
thoroughly tested, but the API is pretty much there.

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

Not really on the road. I'm in the Arizona desert with my laptop living
at a community with Satellite connectivity (no phone or any other form
of communication, which is fine with me). Its really nice here and I'm
finding lots of time to work on the project at hand. :)

> Peter
> 

Lates..
        Josh Green