On 15/10/10 06:30, Will J Godfrey wrote:
[ ... ]
First the bad news. Every patch that uses padsynth will interrupt the sound and
usually throw a single Xrun.
This is not as bad as it seems and is understandable. From info that Paul
originally gave out... Add& Sub build samples on the fly, but Pad creates a
perfect loop-able bufferfull *as* *it* *is* *loaded*. Clearly then there is a
significant overhead that can't be accommodated within one jack frame, so to be
effective the generation process would have to be split up or put in a low
priority thread - assuming that's possible.
However,
Simple Add/Sub single voice patches always load silently. The more voice parts
they have the more likely they are to interrupt the sounds, sometimes with the
briefest of crackles, sometimes more - up and including an Xrun. If you
normally see a delay as a patch loads, then it will interrupt the audio and the
length of the interruption will relate directly to the time it takes the patch
to load (is there a file system issue here maybe).
My initial tests were with a continuous pure sine wave on channel 1 while
loading patches into channel 2 - don't forget it needs to be active too :)
Like this any slightest defect shows up.
Later, I did the same tests, but with a 5 channel song running as well and
switching around in channel 6. The defects were actually *less* noticeable, and
when I also included a qsynth drum track and cunningly timed the voice changes
to coincide with the beat, most of the minor glitches were hidden - you still
won't succeed with Master Synth though :P
The point of that last bit is that I think, even without perfect silence all
the time, the whole idea is still both viable and useful.
I can certainly see the attractiveness of the separate, but related MIDI GUI
overlay, but would think it a good idea at first just to install the MIDI
hooks, and give us testicles (oops) testers a chance to break it :)