robinson@star.enet.dec.com (Dave Robinson) (02/20/91)
Greetings,
I am a bit reluctant to post this in c.s.a.advocacy because someone
is bound to get all worked up, but it is an advocacy issue, and I
need the opinions of experts, some of whom must read this ;-)
(also posted in c.s.a.audio).
The March 1991 issue of _Electronic Musician_ presents an
article titled "Multitasking with MIDI", by Rudy Trubitt that I
believe damns the Amiga with faint praise. But, since the
article mentions the Amiga instead of ignoring it and since
_Electronic Musician_ (EM) is a magazine I respect, I thought
I'd enter this request for information before I write a letter
to EM. It could be they are right and I am wrong. If not,
then I could use some validation or expert opinions as to the
status of MIDI multitasking with the Amiga compared to other
MIDI fluent computers.
Here are excerpts used without permission from the two page
article. Starting at the top:
"How many things can you do at once? Can you simultaneously
answer the phone, write a note, and watch for the mailman? If
you're human, this is called "self-employment". If you're a
computer, it's "multitasking". Not all computers can run
several programs, or "tasks," at once; to do so requires a
"multitasking operating system" such as Commodore's "AmigaDOS"
or Microsoft's "Windows 3.0". Multitasking originally was
developed to let several users share one big computer, but
today's multitasking computers are dedicated to a single
person"
.
.
.
[Info about MAC multifinder & MIDI manager...]
[Info about Microsoft "Windows" multimedia spec currently
released to developers]
[Mention of Atari's announced MIDItasking, DR T's MPE, C-Lab's
"Softlink", Steinberg's "MROS", and Hybrid Arts' "HybriSwitch"
that provide "varying degrees of functionality...not compatible
with each other" ]
.
.
.
Multitasking was built into the "Amiga" hardware and operating
system from the beginning, not added. However, Commodore
established no standard to exchange information between
programs. Thus, multiple MIDI programs can run but not share
data. Commodore reportedly is working on a "MIDI Manager-like"
program to address this problem, but at this point, only
proprietary third-party systems such as DR. T's MPE let one
program send MIDI data to another.
Things will get interesting as multitasking and real-time
data-sharing become more common. For instance, instead of one
big sequencer program, a number of smaller modules from various
sources could provide the building blocks for each of us to
construct our unique work environment. Of course, this would
require unprecedented cooperations between software companies.
But hey, a guy can dream, can't he?
End of article.
So, can people please provide lots of data. Opinions are OK ,but I
know everyone here likes the Amiga. What I really need is data:
o An update on the MIDI Manager-like" standard Commodore is
developing.
o Examples of multitasking MIDI applications and data
sharing.
o Explain whether Bars & Pipes is internally multitasking and
what that means compared to other platforms' sequencers etc.
o Where do Arexx and the clipboard fit into a possible
rebuttal to the statement about no data sharing standard?
Notes:
I personally can run a mini home brew patch save/load program
along with Bars and Pipes. I have to disable MIDI before I
send & receive SYSEX messages, which means it is task
switching, but I suspect I could use the Bars and Pipes AREXX
port to trigger a similar patch librarian. Could I do that with
the Amiga? Can other computers do this?
Can't someone with two serial ports and two MIDI interfaces
load patches on one synth while a sequencer plays another?
I have heard of people playing Deluxe Music scores and piping
the output into other sequencers in order to create Standard
Midi Files. Can someone verify this or provide similar
examples.
Thanks,
Dave Robinson
robinson@star.enet.dec.com
barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (02/21/91)
In article <20357@shlump.nac.dec.com> robinson@star.enet.dec.com (Dave Robinson) writes: > The March 1991 issue of _Electronic Musician_ presents an > article titled "Multitasking with MIDI", by Rudy Trubitt that I > believe damns the Amiga with faint praise. The article made me a little sad, but it seemed rather realistic. The Amiga's multitasking make it a great platform for coexisting MIDI applications, but there is a lack of MIDI applications that can share MIDI data other than saving and loading Standard MIDI Files. But I don't know if the situation is much better on other computers. > So, can people please provide lots of data. Opinions are OK ,but I > know everyone here likes the Amiga. What I really need is data: > o An update on the MIDI Manager-like" standard Commodore is > developing. All I've heard is that it's called camd.library or something like that. > o Examples of multitasking MIDI applications and data > sharing. Multitasking MIDI applications is easy -- most modern Amiga MIDI programs can coexist because they open the serial port in "shared" mode. I have written several MIDI utilities myself, and they all coexist just fine. On the other hand, there's isn't much data sharing going on that I have seen. Bill Barton's free midi.library has this capability, but few commercial applications (if any) use it. > o Where do Arexx and the clipboard fit into a possible > rebuttal to the statement about no data sharing standard? Not too well. Both ARexx and the clipboard provide the POSSIBILITY of data sharing among music applications, but how many programs can you name that actually LET YOU DO IT? Right now, available at your dealer, and not promises or vaporware? Also, ARexx isn't that fast. MIDI must be as real-time as possible. I can see using ARexx to grab data from a sequencer and put it into a score program, but I can't see a chain of ARexx modules processing the MIDI data in real time. > Can't someone with two serial ports and two MIDI interfaces > load patches on one synth while a sequencer plays another? Sure, no problem. I just thought of an interesting way that applications can share Standard MIDI Files (SMF). Let A and B be two sequencers. Tell sequencer A to save a SMF to the file: pipe:xx and tell sequencer B to read a SMF from the same file. Using this pipe, your SMF gets transferred from sequencer A to sequencer B. But this isn't much different from saving your SMF to a disk file first. Another example that I just made up (haven't tried it). Suppose you have an ARexx-compatible MIDI sequencer and an ARexx-compatible database. You could probably tell the sequencer to save its files in the database transparently instead of ordinary disk files, allowing (for example) more sophisticated categorizing of sequences. Dan //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ | Dan Barrett - Systems Administrator, Computer Science Department | | The Johns Hopkins University, 34th and Charles Sts., Baltimore, MD 21218 | | INTERNET: barrett@cs.jhu.edu | | | COMPUSERVE: >internet:barrett@cs.jhu.edu | UUCP: barrett@jhunix.UUCP | \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (02/23/91)
The "midi.library" lets anyone hook together MIDI modules and build a multitasking MIDI application, and it's freeware! Soundscape Pro MIDI studio is the same sort of idea with a neat graphic user interface. Been there since the beginning, and supports Deluxe Music as a score handler. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>.