[Coco] Utilmuse 3 Manual

[gene heskett]

On Tuesday, December 06, 2011 02:55:33 PM Bill Pierce did opine:

> Yep, they needed to update midi years ago. A lot of the gear now uses
> propriorty USB with a similar (but faster) protocol.

And a latency guarantee of 10 to 100 milliseconds.  Grrrr.

> Then there's USB
> midi.. no lag on the line but the hardware on bothe ends still stays
> the old speed.

And there was a move afoot 10 years back to move it to 100base-t ethernet, 
but I don't believe it caught much traction.  Except for the opto stuffs, 
midi is bit banger cheap.

Well, I think there may be help for that in USB-3.0, which in some kits is 
not that much more expensive unless bluetoothed too.

> A lot of the problem with the older gear was not the
> speed of the midi, but the speed of the processors producing and
> recieving it. If you can play notes faster than 31,250 a second
> (divided by 32 bits per note on)... 

That's = 976.5625 notes per second if the start/stop bits weren't counted. 
About 781 with since each 8 bit byte had a start and stop bit attached.  
Admittedly that is a lot of notes per second so that is not the main source 
of the often audible lag.

> then I'll buy tickets for that LOL.

I might too, if the per head price is reasonable. :)

> From the time you hit a note or the sequencer sends a note... the host
> decides what to do with it, puts it on the bus, waits for the clock,
> sends it down the line. Then the reciever gets the note, figures out
> what it is and when it's supposed to play, does any DSP involved then
> sends it to the sound engine... you have to remember, those old
> keyboards had slower processors than the 6809, some even HAD 6809s.

Or 68000's at 7 mhz, which is what the older Roland and Ensoniq's had.

No clue whats in the stuff we'll see piled up in Wallies for Christmas 
though, much of which scares me as its built so cheap.

> The
> stuff today has full blown computer systems with built in touch screens
> and blindingly fast. Usually if there's lag now, I find it's in my own
> system. Usually it's too much junk running in the background. Close all
> the extras and it clears up.

This then is screaming for bringing in the RTAI package.  Its a linux only 
construction and is what the free emc (electronic machine control) uses to 
facilitate the use of strong stepper motors to drive lathes and milling 
machine, robots etc, where the problems in driving steppers to their full 
potential are highlighted by how steady a step command can be sent.  You 
can't expect a motor with mass in its rotor and load, to stop from 400 rpm 
for 10 milliseconds, and re-accelerate back to 400 rpm when something 
disturbs the system and 3 steps don't get sent on time.  It will simply 
stall in place=wrecked part and/or broken $20-$50 cutting tools.

It can be set to loop and update the parport in as little as 15 u-secs on 
fast enough machines.  On the box that runs my mill, it is set for 35 u-
seconds, and that leaves enough iron in a 1400mhz Athlon single core that I 
can run sessions of vim to fine tune the gcode, of firefox on window 3, and 
a session of Konversation, the IRC client, on window 4.  Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 
install.

> Most of my midi now is done within the
> box, all contained to this machine. With over 3000 virtual synths and
> 5000 effects onboard, I rarley go outside the box now. I have
> transcriptions of Keith Emerson (Emerson Lake and Palmer) playing dual
> handed 128th notes at 180bps routed through 6 different synths and
> never a stutter. I guess that's why they never speeded it up. Long
> cable runs seems to be the cause of some lag but I use 25 foot cables
> and don't hear any. There was talk at one time of going to optical as
> well as LAN, but it never happened. The big problem is no manufacturer
> wants to give up the compatability with their old gear and each one
> want's their idea to be the standard. On Umuse, I used to bog it down
> with too many notes at once, but it was the Coco, software and OS9
> bogging, not the speed of midi. BTW, you do know y ou can take the midi
> out of the coco (bitbanger or interface) and plug it into your PC's
> soundcard and use it's midi as output?

Yup, I think I can do it with drivewire4 as I have what turned out to be an 
unusual card, an Audigy 2 Value in this box so it shouldn't be too hard to 
route it.  I have played other midi files with it, the default GM loading 
at bootup seems to have excellent samples in it.  But my own umuse3 
composed stuff is 100% pre-GM, so what I used as a piano, might be a banjo 
to a GM player.  :)

> Most soundcards have midi, it's
> just hidden, Soundblaster comes to mind as well as others. It's routed
> through the joystick port on the card. You have to have an adapter
> Joy-2-Midi. It terminates in 2 midi cabes, in/out. You can get them at
> any music store that sells midi gear.

I didn't know that, I'll have to check that the next time I go to the mall. 
I have been meaning to drop the card for one of the bigger Yamaha keyboards 
anyway since the CZ-101 died as Dee would like to have a better keyboard 
when she is asked to play for some gathering as usually the pianos they may 
or may not are in excruciatingly terminal need of tuning.  Actually it 
still works but to keep it on key, that pair of tune buttons needs to be 
bridged permanently, otherwise it drifts to maximum bend down in about 2 
seconds.  Plus it was mono.  But it did have far better samples than the 
MT-240 ever thought of having.  The MT-240 of course doesn't have the 
output to be heard in a crowd either, a watt or so max.  Veddy Puny.  Of 
course an MT-240 would be considered as something dug up from yards below 
the KT Boundary nowadays. ;-)

> Now that's a thought, a Coco
> running a quad core PC... LMAO Actually, that's how I transfered all my
> Coco midi to the PC...
> 
> Yep, I've seen the messages in the code to Umuse and Lyra :-)
> 
> 
> Bill Pierce
> ooogalapasooo at aol.com
[...]
Thanks Bill, I've learned something today!  And given me a reason to go 
shopping again.

Cheers, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
* joeyh_ wonders if linux is supposed to lock up when you ask 100
  processes to cat the entire cd drive