Midi Routing

• Sep 28, 2009 - 05:48

I'm loving all the improvements I'm seeing lately! I know that there has been a bit of discussion in the past about reworking audio/midi to allow for more flexibility. Can I ask what needs to happen in order to get midi routing working in windows? I wish that I could contribute some code to this, but that is not my forte.

Thanks and I appreciate all the hard work thus far.

Comments

• Sep 28, 2009 - 17:30

Thanks for the link to the great thread! I'm glad that different possibilities (especially VST instruments!) are at least being considered. Now that several months have passed since that thread was posted, a couple of questions come to mind:

1) Regarding midi in/out, Werner wrote "[t]here also is the option to implement JACK output for windows as there is a
jack port available for window (i don't know if it does midi)." So now that Jack supports native MIDI backend on osx and windows (JackCoreMidiDriver, JackWinMMEDriver) as of 1.9.3 released last July, is this option being seriously considered?

2) Regarding the integration of non-GPL Steinberg header files for VST instruments, Toby Smithe suggested that "[t]he Audacity project overcomes this difficulty in a manner similar to the Linux kernel and binary drivers, by providing a
bridging plug-in." Can this solution be adopted and does anyone have the inclination to try it?

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• Oct 1, 2009 - 18:47

If i find the time this weekend i will implement JACK midi. I have no idea how difficult it will be to get this running on windows and mac and will not start a port myself.
You are right that this has not a high priority. I think the midi output of MuseScore is not good enough to spend much effort for this "professional" environment. The time might be better invested in first enhancing the midi output itself.

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• Oct 7, 2009 - 18:59

As stated in the comment, Werner added support for Jack MIDI this week end. I "ported" it to Windows, together with Jack Audio.
Here are two videos to demonstrate what can be done:

For Jack audio, using a VST effect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YB-c5sQb6U

For Jack Midi, playback with VSTi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgHamEhVbCM

According to Werner, there is still room for improvements in Jack MIDI integration, as you can hear, there is some jitters.
More insights here: http://n2.nabble.com/Compile-instructions-for-Windows-with-JACK-td37721…

You can use the new Windows prerelease to test: http://prereleases.musescore.org/windows

Regarding MacOSX, despite the announcement, Jack MIDI is not yet integrated with a nice UI etc ... compared to Windows installer. But it will come. Next prerelease on Mac OS X will have Jack Audio and Jack Midi enabled.
Jack Audio on Mac is already possible in 0.9.5 thanks to JackRouter. See: http://www.musescore.org/en/node/2000#comment-4753

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• Oct 8, 2009 - 22:49

This is great! Thanks Werner for spending time on this, and Lasconic for the youtube videos. This really makes ms more useful to me.

I will patiently await the day when we can select channels/ports for each instrument (in the mixer perhaps?). Musescore is getting better and better!

Also, I noticed that the "use jack midi output" checkbox doesn't stick after restarting. Is this by design?

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