> This is what AMS, SSM, gAlan, PD etc let you do right now - MIDI is converted > to a 'voltage' signal (by various means) and then routed to plugins in the > graph. Ditto JACK - you can connect a JACK port to anything you like in these > apps.
I don't know near enough to say it should be Jack specifically that does the inter-app passing of control signals. But my point is that *midi converted to a signal* is insufficient. Midi is low depth low sample rate ( or baud in this case ) totally impractical as say the input source on a filters CV in case you wanted really tight envelopes. I'd like to see one module able to generate a high res signal in some cool manner that can then be used for whatever strikes my fancy, without worrying about the signal being too coarse for my selected job. Or many modules each working one one signal that in the very end goes into a filter cutoff plug. So say a user wants to sequence something from midi, they could *start* the signal as 7 bit, but once it's in the signal path it gets upped to 24 or 32 by audio sample rate so that as it goes through envelopes, lfos, sample and holds, mixers, etc, etc, we aren't processing a low quality signal. ( I hope I'm making some kinda sense here. ) I guess what I'm really trying to say is just that we should keep an eye to the future and make sure we enable the inter-app routing of HIGH resolution control signals through some kind of easily accessible standard if we really are trying to achieve a *modular*. The beauty of a modular is that you *can* use an audio signal as a control signal and vice versa. It doesn't care, go ahead, blow up your speakers! Sure, that does means higher overhead, but personally, I'm a lot more interested in having my CPU choke on a killer modular than being able to run yet another limited software synthesize, know what I mean? Modulars are supposed to be expensive . . . ; ) Iain
