@hikari @mcc @jens @sixohsix there are so many things called MIDI.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hikari @mcc @jens @sixohsix there are so many things called MIDI. MIDI-the-wire-protocol has never wronged me. my pile of modular synths synchronize and keep time just fine using MIDI-the-wire-protocol. "now" is well defined in this situation because there is no timesharing operating system running on a ghz cpu in the loop, and the devices mostly respect MIDI *glares at teenage engineering*

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hikari @mcc @jens @sixohsix ALSA has a thing called MIDI that is a superset of MIDI-the-wire-protocol and it has time stamps and a sequencer and stuff, and it is mostly ok! But time is convoluted on a time sharing operating system, especially on a ghz CPU. ALSA's problem may turn out to simply be a matter of lacking documentation. However, you will find old signage like in Rosegarden's docs imploring you to use a custom realtime kernel.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hikari @mcc @jens @sixohsix the other problem with ALSA is it's Linux only, so everything I write for it I'll have to do again elsewhere with a different superset of MIDI-the-wire-protocol. (AFAICT) Windows seems to "solve" this problem by not letting you make arbitrary MIDI connections between applications.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@hikari @mcc @jens @sixohsix the road points towards me building my own MIDI-the-file-format sequencer inside mollytime, and only using MIDI-the-wire-protocol-OS-specific-suprsets as a just-in-time note delivery system, which will work fine because none of my MIDI-the-wire-protocol devices can bend time and send you notes from the future