From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Sat Oct 31 22:09:21 1998
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To: alsa-devel@jcu.cz
Subject: Re: ALSA sequencer and synth control (Was Re: ALSA + AWE32) 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 31 Oct 1998 15:31:32 +0100."
             <Pine.LNX.3.96.981031151930.30998B-100000@entry.jcu.cz> 
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 16:06:54 -0500
From: Paul Barton-Davis <pbd@op.net>
Reply-To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Sender: alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz
Precedence: list

>Programmers with intelligent hardware (like you mentioned TB
>soundcards), shouldn't implement any load on demand interface, why if
>hardware does this job?

Because a lot of the time, people who are actually playing music don't
want a General MIDI set of instruments. Most of the time, I replace my
synth's boot-time-ROM-resident GM instrument set with one of the
dozens of different instrument sets I've created myself (or
downloaded).

You seem to imagine that "program change to program #1" always mean
that the intent was to provide a piano-like sound. A lot of the time,
program #1 on my soundcard synth's (and external MIDI synths) is about
as far from a piano as you can get :) 

Under these circumstances, the idea that some generic software can
know what I mean when I ask for "program #1" is far-fetched, to put it
mildly. Therefore, I (and others) continue to need a way to download
patches/programs/samples/instruments that has nothing to do with
General MIDI or any other "standard" instrument set.

>OK. Looks we are on same frequency now ;-))

Well, within 1KHz anyway :) 

It seems as if your main goals area in the area of sound playback for
things like games, web plugins and MIDI files. My goals are in the
area of live music performance, composition and synth programming.

--p



