On Saturday 11 November 2006 15:50, jdow wrote:
>From: "Les Mikesell" <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>> On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 14:04, jdow wrote:
>>> For what it is worth the state of MIDI on 'ix is one of the chief
>>> reasons I do not do more of my professional development on an 'ix
>>> operating system. Microsoft MIDI is bad enough. But 'ixish MIDI
>>> is sickening to work with the last times I tried. Good luck.
>>>
>>> {o.o} <- needs MIDI with sub-millisecond accuracy for some things.
>>> SMF files can't do that. But the software we have can. Even
>>> millisecond accuracy on ix machines has been "amusing" to
>>> try to get. Making arpeggios work right is bad enough. But
>>> MIDI Show Control and MIDI Machine Control sometimes needs
>>> that 1 ms or finer timing accuracy to make effects work
>>> right.
>>
>> Does OS X qualify as 'ix in this respect or have they they
>> made it usable for professional work?
>
>OS X seems to work, which suggests 'ix still has a chance if it gets
>a kernel tuned more towards interactive rather than server. Remember
>that most of the 'ix folks are more interested in server type uses
>than "<disparaging tone>Desktops and Games."
>
>MIDI actually benefits when it is on a good game machine. And MS has
>seen a nice market in games so they have their OS compromised to
>support games and desktops nicely. (Currently I'd not think of using
>Linux as a desktop machine. I'd not think of using anything but 'ix
>of some sort for a server machine. 'Ix machines of all flavors I
>have tried make Windows look fast with regards to the user experience.)
>
>But that's just my sad opinion - ymmv GREATLY and I would expect that
>to be the case. (If I have a STRONG bias it is towards the old Amiga
>machines - a SPLENDID game, video, and desktop machine in its day. It
>"enjoyed" doing things for you. Apples and Windows of the era seemed
>to begrudge you their rest and scream in anguish when you asked them
>to do something. And 'ix machines would look at you and say "What is
>this silly obnoxious request you have for me to do?")
>
>In the final analysis pick your application to do what you need the
>most in the most efficient manner for you that you can find. Then
>get a machine that runs the OS and hardware that application needs.
>Placing priority on OS first then applications is bassakwards and
>always has been.
>
>{^_-}
I might add, to put the weight of the iron in the system into perspective,
that I have done some quite adequate midi work, on a trs-80 color
computer running os9, driving both a hardware rs-232 port and a serial
bit banger, splitting the voices between them to overcome the limited
polyphony of my cheap keyboards. This mind you was on a machine whose
basic cpu clock speed is 0.889 mhz. No, thats NOT a typo...
--
Cheers, Gene
