[sdiy] Communications with voices in a polyphonic synth

[cheater cheater]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 16:38, Tom Wiltshire <tom at electricdruid.net> wrote:
> Cheater,
>
> I agree with you that perhaps I wasn't thinking "worst case scenario", and I
> certainly need a bit of slack for these kinds of occasions.
>
> However, I'd raise a couple of points;
>
> 1) If a glitch occurs when(if) 64 keys are hit simultaneously, I don't care
> - it's going to be a racket anyway. Who'd notice a couple of dropped notes
> in that mess?

This is based on an assumption that each note is loud. But a lot of
synthesis techniques happen through a big amount of voices being
triggered at once, each voice contributing a small part. Granted,
that's not the use case for your synth, but can happen, and it could
well lead to some very creative uses. In my opinion it's not good to
inhibit creative freedom if you don't absolutely positively have to.

> 2) Why should 'matrix destination' packets get priority over key ons?
> Parameter changes are a lower priority.

Because you want the note to be started with the parameters that
depend on the note event (velocity, pitch, etc), instead of it
starting at some default value and then changing quickly to a new
value. That would be a glitch.

> As far as OSC support is concerned, I haven't heard of it, so I'm not
> supporting it. If I manage to catch up with MIDI (I'm still 25 years behind
> present day technology) and get that working, I'll be more than happy.

OSC is really easy. It's probably going to be easier for you to do OSC
than midi. For one thing, you can skip the state machine crappiness.
And it's much easier to debug though, since it's all just plaintext.

D.