On Sun Jun 6, at SundayJun 6 1:58 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 6 Jun 2010 at 10:21, Christopher Smith wrote:
I remember my first computer, an old Atari ST 8 bit 8 mHz machine
with 1 meg of RAM, always had flawless MIDI timing because the
operating system prioritised MIDI message timing.
Well, that wasn't a multi-tasking OS, no?
True enough, but no operating system at that time was multitasking
for micro (home) computers. It was a computer aimed directly at
electronic music, though, because the MIDI was built into the
hardware AND the operating system, and the OS gave first priority to
MIDI. Amazing for the time. I didn't even have a hard drive for the
first year I owned it, because I didn't need one.
I have perhaps an incomplete understanding of OS architecture, but
shouldn't it be possible to time-stamp MIDI events incoming, so that
they are always recorded at the right time, and to give priority to
playback so that MIDI messages are sent as close to the proper time
as the message itself allows (roughly 1 ms)? That's what the Atari
OS did. It seems that my computer (Mac) is always too busy doing
something else (internal housekeeping, I imagine) to worry about
proper MIDI timing. Or maybe that's just Finale. But I also get an
inordinate amount of slop with Cubase on Mac as well, both with
virtual instruments (yes, I know about latency) and with the same
external MIDI devices that had great (okay, not great, but
acceptable) timing with my Atari. But Finale is the worst I have ever
experienced.
Christopher
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