Re: midish, ecasound and jack

hello,

> You may be interested in aucat (at least to pick ideas), it's a
> audio player/recorder/converter with mtc/mmc capabiliry, see
> 

thanks for pointing to it, looks like it can suit my needs :
playback of about 4 stereo wav files, and mix them with a midi controllable volume control
great !

> Currently it's part of OpenBSD but it's being ported to linux. Drop
> me a mail if you're interested in the linux port.

yes i am interested in trying it out.

> Interesting; afaics the hardest part would be to decide what to do
> with markers during copy & paste operations.

to me, markers should stay where they were defined (bar:beat position) it would not make sense to copy them to another position.
On another hand, moving a bar containing a marker would keep the marker attached to this bar, thus moving its position

For a complete integration of markers, midish would probably need some extra feature to edit those markers names and positions, and deal with eventual markers with the same name.

> iirc there's some work in this direction, but I don't know to which
> extent the MTC aspect of the problem is solved. Search for
> jackctlmmc and a2jmidid on the web as an entry point.

i will look into that, but i'm afraid it is not the best solution to use more intermediate programs. It is probably working good, but i have a feeling of complexity that i wouldn't like to debug when i have a problem in a live situation.

> At some point you need the audio player to send MTC back to midish.
> This is required because audio playback advances at the sound card
> clock rate while midish uses the system clock rate and both rates
> are slightly different and will cause drift sooner or later

good point, i wasn't aware of it.

So let me put some more info about what i want to achieve :
Today i use a macbook, running puredata and abelton live to play wav files, and midi sequences to change patches on the voice, guitar, drums, and bass rig. Each musician also have a midi mixer to control their ear monitors on the RME fireface UFX.
I want to replace the mac with a  simple (understand light and fast booting, no X) linux box for two reasons : Using only GNU-like software, and challenge myself to gain some experience.
Today i have a intel-atom motherboard to run it, once achieved and satisfied, i'd like to port it on some ARM board i have in stock.

The need is :
- 4 wav files to mix to adat out (RME digi96/8 ok with alsa)
- 4 to 5 midi tracks (on different hardware ports through DIY USB GM5 box)
- get those two synchronized
- ability to move freely within the song (either using midi markers <best>, or a transport bar)

I don't expect to use the midi edit functions often, as our midi track are pretty well prepared (but it happens sometimes, it is mainly CC and PC messages).
after reading your answer, and Julien's one, a can see three directions for the setup :

1) ecasound <jack,jackctlmmc, a2jmidid, kilk> midish
i need to learn about all these interactions

2) aucat <MTC> midish 
looks interesting as i don't need jack, i just need synchronization, this one look very promising to me, need some testing.

3) ecasound <jack> JPmidi
I saw this program on julien's website, but hence not related to midish. with no midi edit functions....

Let me know if this discussion is going beyond the scope of midish mailing list. I can separate the thread about the midi markers integration and my personal project using midish.

Raphaël