Description of feature (short and simple): A simple module that can playback preloaded .mid files
How will this feature improve the workflow or experience for all SSP users (keep it short and focused): Would be super handy to have some .mid file playback. Points for multi-channel, built in clock, input / output etc… Could be basic too. How hard to build this?
frankly, it’s a bit of a pain…
midi and modular are not great ‘bed fellows’ … given the mono voice nature of modular vs inherent polyphony of midi, it gets messy.
(ok, if we had polyphonic wires it be kind of neat… but thats a huge infrastructural change for synthor)
as for complexity… its non-trivial…
the concept of a sequence of events is not that tricky, but the timing side of it is pretty complex. also the file format is inherently multi track. so its not just a matter of a sequence of midi events… the file format has to convey the complexity, so you have to deal with it… even in simple cases.
of course, at the end of the days its not ‘difficult’, these things are well documented, we have libraries to handle etc - but it would be a little time consuming to implement.
but I guess its kind of interesting, if someone wanted to do it.
Gotcha. Thanks for the breakdown. I guess that’s why we haven’t really seen a product that does it. Cheers. &e
for your info, the SDS digital Sequarallel does that (record a .mid file) and replay it (and mangle/loop it any way you want)
it doesn’t have a sound engine
and it doesn’t have an import function (yet, it is coming with an extension)
wow, haven’t seen that module before. looks super cool, thank you!
thats a pretty odd module…
doesn’t load midi files, rather just records/playbacks midi events from the midi trs?
as the 4x pitch/vel/gate are output only… which is a shame, otherwise it be a nice cv recorder.
of course the SSP can do cv recording (via recorder), which is quite nice as its sample accurate, and up to 8 channels… so you could use this for recording ‘midi’ … but not really suitable for long recordings.
Yeah the ability to play .mid files would be awesome to play old video game tracks covers and stuff.
I guess that could be done by with a daw sending the midi info to the SSP right?
I believe you can do this with VCV, which is quite friendly with the SSP…
you really can’t because the SSP’s MIDI protocol is OMNI ON, so it will respond to all MIDI channels at the same time
and
it will also not respond to polyphonic MIDI messages ; it will cut off previous notes
and
it will assign polyphonic MIDI messages (on the same channel) in a round robin way, so you never know to which (note in which) module (sampler e.g.) your notes will go/trigger
not quite sure I follow you @wavejockey
SSP MIDI is not omni … you specify the midi channels for each MIDI object, it just defaults to ALL.
MIDI does respond to polyphonic messages, so wont ‘cut off’ notes ( as you say it uses a round robin voice allocation),
yes you dont know which MIDI it will come out of for a single midi channel , but that does not matter, as each voice should be in that case identical - this basically true of any poly synth.
… and separate midi channels can have different sounds/voices (see above)
so basically we have polyphony AND multi-timbrality.
so definitely possible, of course, polyphony is going to be limited, and its going to be a pretty big patch…
but this would also be true of a midi file player module.
a midi file player would just replace the multiple MIDI modules, none of the voicing etc.
but really, polyphony is a whole different topic… but would be important for any kind of midi file playback.