[Linuxsampler-devel] Questions - Audio channels & MIDI ports vs. MIDI channels

[Mark K. <mk...@co...>]

Hi,
    I'm just starting to set up a few files to automatically load 
multiple gig files. I want to check with you all something about the way 
LS presents itself to qjackctl. (Or probably more accurately to Jack)

    I'm using the following script:


GET CHANNELS

ADD CHANNEL
SET CHANNEL AUDIO_OUTPUT_TYPE 0 JACK
SET CHANNEL MIDI_INPUT_TYPE 0 ALSA
SET CHANNEL MIDI_INPUT_CHANNEL 0 1
LOAD ENGINE gig 0
LOAD INSTRUMENT 
/home/mark/data/samples/Gigs/Drones/04DramaDrones/45DroneArcheol
ogy.gig 0 0
SET CHANNEL VOLUME 0 1.4

ADD CHANNEL
SET CHANNEL AUDIO_OUTPUT_TYPE 1 JACK
SET CHANNEL MIDI_INPUT_TYPE 1 ALSA
SET CHANNEL MIDI_INPUT_CHANNEL 1 10
LOAD ENGINE gig 1
LOAD INSTRUMENT /home/mark/data/samples/Gigs/Drums/Wizzo/Ambience Kit 
XXL.gig 0
1
SET CHANNEL VOLUME 1 1.4

GET CHANNELS


All indications in the two LS terminals are that things are working 
correctly, but when I look at LS inside of qjackctl I see the following 
that I want to ask questions about:

1) I get only a single pair of audio outputs, not the two separate pairs 
I might have expected. Is LS currently mixing the output of all engines 
into a single stereo output pair or is the second engine not there at 
all? I think they should be separate so that I can send them to 
different signal processing chains.

2) I only get a single MIDI port inside the MIDI connections page of 
qjackctl. This may be correct as I think qjackctl doesn't show me what 
is hooked to each MIDI channel, but I want to check that this is the 
expected operation. If this is expected then can I somehow create 
separate ports for each loaded instrument, and even nicer, can I somehow 
name these ports so that connections to them become more user friendly?

I also noticed that LS is picky about what channel numbers I use. For 
instance, if there isn't a channel 0 then I cannot assign an engine to 
channel 1. I don't know if this is intended or a bug, but it seems 
likely that later we'll want to be adding and dropping channels as we 
use the sampler and it would be good to just allow the user to use any 
unique number instead of an incremental one. Just a thought.

I haven't made much sound yet. Just getting started...

Thanks,
Mark