[Ardour-Dev] 14 bit midi control messages?

[Natanael Olaiz]

Hi Paul,

Sorry for the delayed reply, but just today I made further tests.

Ardour automations takes just the most (or less) significant controller, 
but in any case the full 14 bit range :(

I tested it with a pd patch sending in one and other order. (I tried 
also to configure a BCF2000 to use 14 bit controllers, but i couldn't 
make it work as expected... -I can't save the presets !!!????- )


If I test something more I'll let you know. Thanks for your answer.

Best regards,
Natanael.


El 03/31/2009 03:14 PM, Paul Davis escribió:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Natanael Olaiz <nolaiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I want to automate the controls of certain ladspa plugins over midi, but I
>> want to use paired 14 bit control messages... Can Ardour handle that?
>>     
>
> the code is certainly there.
>
> however .... 14 bit MIDI controller messages are fundamentally
> misdesigned. i've even had the head of the MMA admit this. let me
> explain. when a device sends a 14 bit message, it has two choices:
>
> 1) send both MIDI messages, one for the upper 7 bits and one for the lower
> 2) if only the lower bits have changed, send only the message for the
> least-significant 7 bits
>
> quite a nice design, eh? well, yes, it would be except for one little
> glitch. if the sender decides to use (1), it has to send the
> least-significant bits first, *then* send the most-significant bits.
> so? well, this means that when the receiver gets a message with the
> least-significant bits, it doesn't know if the most-significant bits
> are coming or not. it has to implement some kind of timeout design to
> decide whether this is just a change in the least-significant bits or
> a change across all 14.
>
> if MIDI had reversed this design so that if both messages are sent,
> the  most-significant bits are sent first, this problem would not
> exist.
>
> the result can be a bit ugly.
>
> let me know how it works out for you. i don't that its been tested - i
> have some devices that can send 14bit controller messages but I don't
> think I've tested them in a while and more importantly i think the
> device i have that does this always sends both messages.
>
>