Notation Software, "Cantabile" VST host and more.

[NotationUser]

Hi Mark.

Thanks for your insight in ongoing development.

Concerning myself I am critical with built in sound sources as I want to play in realtime. This needs usually ASIO based low latency sound generation.

One experience I can refer to is "Miditzer216", a free - and BTW must see: http://www.virtualorgan.com/Default.asp?Page=110 - Wurlitzer theater organ emulation with built in sounds synthesized by "Fluidsynth". Fluidsynth is an open source project providing a synthfont based sound synthesizer that some developers include with their products.

Just to give an idea of the difference: With Asio4All and Cantabile I usually run 1x 128 sample buffer size for realtime audio needs. With Fluidsynth in Miditzer I hardly can go below 8x 128 sample audio buffer size without running into buzzing audio overload.

If Midizer were a piano this latency would be a real issue... just original (theater) organs don't feel snappy too because of their construction with pipes - so in this special case it works.

I am not sure if Fluidsynth already provides ASIO support yet - it's probably on the development community list. But as long as it does not it is no serious choice for anything beyond pure playback were latency doesn't matter too much.

Not sure if you were experimenting with "Fluidsynth" - but it sounded a bit alike...

[Edit:] I forgot to mention "Notion 3" from notionmusic: http://notionmusic.com/products/notion3.html If you haven't seen this check it out. It's the most in one scoring - hosting - soundlib supporting - mixing - producing solution I know about. It's at a different price point, I know, but it comes with a professional sample lib that totally integrates into the scoring process. Any articulations work from score symbols, even those that need sample switching to make it more reslistic. That's really a monster package.

[Mark W]

Hello NotationUser,

Just to give an idea of the difference: With Asio4All and Cantabile I usually run 1x 128 sample buffer size for realtime audio needs. With Fluidsynth in Miditzer I hardly can go below 8x 128 sample audio buffer size without running into buzzing audio overload.

You've identified one of the biggest challenges of offering sound font support, which is choosing the right buffer sizes. I spent a couple weeks implementing automatic selection of the right buffer size. I really need to release this soundfont support in Composer. There are many such 50% or 80% finished projects that I should have finished rather than start on another that was begging with a higher priority at the time.

Cheers
-- Mark

[NotationUser]

I think it's simply difficult to provide realtime audio without ASIO.

Windows audio (DXi or however it is called) is not designed for that and often works just with 1024 samples buffer size. Going below get's usually tough.

The usual guess is that total latency should be below 10ms to be not too disturbing.

1024samples @44.1kHz sampling rate calculates to over 23ms!

128samples @44.1kHz sampling rate results in about 3ms.

Usually there is a bit additional system and midi latency too that is difficult to rate or meter depending on what one is using. I don't think more than 256sample @44.1kHz buffer size is acceptable for realtime playing.

And I frequently read that drummers can't even go with 3ms latency and want less...

All depends on if one wants just to playback audio or to play it keyboard style as well.