[music-dsp] Moselle Membership Requirement

2013-12-30 Thread Frank Sheeran
 Moselle looks interesting and useful and is definitely worth spending time
 on.  In a way I am sympathetic about the comments about subscription
 fatigue.  I am a user of MuseScore music notation software.  Even though I
 like the software tremendously I had to unsubscribe from the forum.

Hi Linda,

Thanks for giving it some consideration.

To be clear there is no daily mail or anything on the forum.  There's
a mass mailing to announce a new version, and there's only been one
such mail (for the initial release) and not expected to be more often
than once a month.

I've thought about removing this requirement and haven't for the
following reasons:

1) probably almost zero chance of this, but the most serious
consideration: should there turn out to be a security problem with
Moselle I'd like a way to reach all people who've downloaded it as
fast as possible with instructions to either delete it or upgrade it.
Such a possibility isn't unique to Moselle; in fact this is true of
literally any software.  You should be worried about any software
you've installed from Microsoft or Apple down to the smallest VST
plug-in vendor that DOESN'T give the developer a way to reach you.

2) if the download is anonymous, Moselle will be automatically found
and copied by free download sites that re-offer the software as
free-ware or share-ware and without any connection to the forum and so
on.  Such sites have higher Google priority than I ever will and it
will be hard for people to even find the bona fide site.  Meanwhile
such sites often require you to use advertising-supported download
managers and so on that give you adware or worse.  Finally, were the
community to get used to the idea of downloading Moselle from
shareware sites, it opens up the possibility that such sites offer
something more sinister--viruses and the like--under the name.  I
don't want my name associated with adware or viruses, and making a
non-membership download makes such a result almost certain.

3) frankly this is power software with a steep learning curve.
Furthermore its so new I'm positive it has bugs.  Right now I would
almost guarantee that even in trying to get a feel for it you'll have
problems and questions, at which point you'd need a web forum
membership to post a question.

4) I'd say that even getting it installed and started once--before you
even make your first sound--takes 5x longer than signing up for the
membership, then reading through the first chapter or two of tutorial
examples will be an hour or two, 100x longer than the signup.  The
whole tutorial maybe 10 hours?  In short, if you don't have time to
get the web account, you REALLY don't have time to even look at
Moselle.  Its a complete programming language and software development
environment.  Its not some pretty box that does one thing which will
be obvious just by looking at it.

5) its commercial software, and the price for the stand-alone version
isn't monetary but is meant to be at least one feedback.  Given the
experience, planning, and development, and that the result is (I
think) one of the top most powerful half-dozen synthesis tools
available, I don't think this is too much.  So again, if you choose to
actually pay the price--a feedback--you will need the forum membership
anyway.  The only people for whom a membership is superfluous are
people that a priori plan to steal it by not paying the price of a
feedback.

If you or anyone has a way to meet the above goals without requiring a
membership I'm all ears, but I'm even more eager to have actual
feedback on the software.  (To date I've had none.)
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Re: [music-dsp] Moselle Membership Requirement

2013-12-30 Thread robert bristow-johnson

On 12/30/13 7:06 PM, Frank Sheeran wrote:

Moselle looks interesting and useful and is definitely worth spending time
on.  In a way I am sympathetic about the comments about subscription
fatigue.  I am a user of MuseScore music notation software.  Even though I
like the software tremendously I had to unsubscribe from the forum.

Hi Linda,

Thanks for giving it some consideration.


...

If you or anyone has a way to meet the above goals without requiring a
membership I'm all ears, but I'm even more eager to have actual
feedback on the software.  (To date I've had none.)



well,  Frank, until your 12/13/13 announcement, i hadn't heard of this.  
i *did* register a membership.  didn't know exactly what to look for.  i 
dunno even the platform requirements.  i was sorta interested in looking 
for any example code or glue code or API spec or something.


how much of this product is developed?  all those modules in Initial 
Idea List?  need any help with any?


also, i might have some ideas regarding sample I/O, connections, control 
signal/parameters, and module structure.  but i dunno what it is that 
you have regarding that.


i can offer feedback when i can figger out where it's at presently.

modular environment is cool.  i've seen the innards of at least a couple 
of different commercial realizations (won't divulge any protected 
secrets) of modular effect environments.  i've also seen the innards of 
an environment that *purported* to be modular and was not.  it was only 
on the surface, but inside it was spaghetti, nothing really modular 
about it.  also won't say who that is, but you can guess.  :-)


so, without context, here is my initial advice for free:

process samples in blocks of, say, at least 32 or 64.  maybe bigger, 
depending on how live you want this to be.  this way, the cost of 
fetching states and pointers in the beginning of a module signal 
processing code and saving the states at the end, that cost is amortized 
over all of the samples of the block.


every instantiation of a module owns the memory for all of its outputs 
as well as for any states or delay lines.  inputs are just references to 
outputs.  user parameters and/or control signals are different.  they 
can be asynchronous.


then writing the code for the individual modules is a snap.

--

r b-j  r...@audioimagination.com

Imagination is more important than knowledge.



--
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subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp 
links
http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp
http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp