[sdiy] Coupla Things - OT

[Andre Majorel]

On 2005-09-04 19:32 -0700, Pete Niedermayr wrote:

> Is anybody on the list doing midi over Ethernet? Any advice?

No. But, FYI :

Ethernet is fast but undeterministic. MIDI is meant to be
reliable ; ethernet is not. Errors occur (due to collisions or
electromagnetic interference) and are handled at a higher level by
retransmitting the packet. If you don't retransmit (IP/UDP-style),
you may lose packets. If you retransmit (TCP-style), you have more
latency and random delays.

Collisions are handled by retransmitting after a random delay (see
CSMA/CD). This is done inside the ethernet hardware and cannot be
prevented AFAIK.

That being said, the latency can still be smaller than MIDI. On a
small 100 Mbps network, you can get latencies on the order of 150
µs (vs. 320 µs for MIDI).

> I'm resurrecting some old synths (80's vintage). I'm thinking, I
> should replace the lithium batteries in them as long as I'm
> dealing with them. Do I have to worry about lost data when doing
> this? By lost data, I mean, not patches and such,but the synth
> OS. 

The OS is typically in ROM.

-- 
André Majorel <amajorel at teaser.fr>
http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/