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Re: Midi Footcontrol Problem



I seriously doubt that you would hear latency caused by midi itself in this
case. midi certainly isn't fast by any current standard, but the time
required to send any usual midi command from one device to another is less
than 1ms and well below human perception. Certainly a lot less than a
twentieth of a second (50ms). Sending a program change takes .64ms and a
continuous control messages takes .96ms. Certainly if you are trying to
send a large number of messages at once it can add up to where you hear it,
but I don't think that would be the case for sending a single message from
a footpedal to a jamman.

A more likley problem is the time required by the transmitting device to
react to your button press and send the message, or the time the receiving
device takes to actually do something with the midi message once it gets
there. That will vary wildly on the device's processor speed and how it is
programmed. Since you both experienced such a problem with the jamman, it
could be that the jamman is slow to respond to midi. (I have no idea, I
don't remember anyone complaining about that before.)

In the Echoplex we knew this command latency would be critical to using it,
since as you noted response times are much more critical in looping than
they might be for other things. The echoplex has a very tight real-time
architecture so it responds to any command within 1.5ms. The inaccuracy of
a human pressing a switch is probably significantly greater than that.

kim


At 2:54 PM -0800 2/4/01, max valentino wrote:
>and....that Lex footswitch is rather cumbersome and not too exacting 
>itself.
>I would opt for the Boss Footswitches. the work a lot better.
>Someone with much more knowledge of the MIDI protocol could probably 
>explain
>better than I just WHY there is that latency.....I can confirm for you 
>that
>it is there, and suggest you not use it.
>or...use MIDI to select loop banks, MIDI fade, and feedback lvl (delay 
>mode)
>but use a god footswitch to tap in and out of loops.
>Max
>
>
>>From: SoundFNR@aol.com
>>Reply-To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
>>To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
>>Subject: Midi Footcontrol Problem
>>Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 07:32:54 EST
>>
>>Can anyone help?
>>I'm using a Yamaha MFC10 midi-foot controller with my JamMan,
>>and I'm getting a delay that's making tapping in loops
>>a bit impractical ( about a twentieth of a second )
>>So what I need to know is
>>1) is it caused by the controller, which means I can think about
>>replacing it.
>>2) is it caused by the JamMan's Midi implementation, in which
>>case I'll stick with the lex footswitch
>>3) is this just an example of the limitayaions of midi.
>>I can still record an in time loop as the delay is the same on both taps,
>>but some things I want to do just won't work.
>>
>>Any advice/info gratefully accepted
>>
>>Andy Butler

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com