Re: Real-time category

[Jeff Larson <Jeffrey.Larson@Sun.COM>]

S V G wrote:
 >
 > Are you a Musician?
 >
 > Not, do you play an instrument, rather, if we jammed together,
 > would I come away from that experience saying to myself, man, that
 > Jeff is a Real Musician...

A Real Musician (tm)?  Heavens no.  I am however a programmer and if you
worked with me you would say, man, that Jeff is a Real Programmer ;-)

Seriously, I do feel that I am qualified to comment on precisely what
a real-time OS can and cannot do, and whether or not I am a musician
is irrelevant.  25 years ago I was a descent jazz saxophonist.  For
the next 15 years I spent a lot of time jamming with drum machines,
digital delays, and hardware loopers.  Then I had kids and now I don't
have time to keep my chops in shape.  So no, I am not a Real Musician,
I can't blow through Giant Steps at 160 BPM but I do think my sense of
timing is pretty damn good.

 > Perhaps answering this question may throw some light on the whole
 > topic under consideration.  The way I see it, nobody except a musician
 > really gives a hoot as to whether or not a Looper has a RTOS.  I think
 > Kim has stated very well and quite clearly, that non real time systems
 > are quite fine and adequate for many uses and users.  Just not for
 > musicians.

I respectfully disagree.  The reasons have not been stated clearly, at
least not to the level of clarity that I expect when conversing
with other engineers.

I'm not trying to argue, I genuinely want to understand what
statements like this mean:

[Kim]
 > Looping happens to be a very time sensitive application, since users
 > constantly interact with it in a rhythmic fashion and timing inaccuracies
 > tend to get multiplied as the loop repeats.

This doesn't make any sense to me and no one has been able to offer an
adequate explanation.

Finally, I appreciate the kind words from others regarding Mobius, but
I also want to make it clear that I'm not trying to defend Mobius, I
am trying to defend the concept that it is theoretically possible to
write software for a non-real-time OS that behaves adequately for
musicians.

All software loopers have bugs or design flaws that cause them to
glitch or to introduce timing errors on occasion, Mobius is no
exception.  You may be surprised to learn that Mobius does not actually
process MIDI events as accurately as it could.  You are currently
experiencing an average of 5 milliseconds of timing jitter for each
command, which can result in loop length errors up to 10 milliseconds.
Haven't you noticed ! :-) But you can't use a software bug as an
argument for the superiority of an RTOS.

All computers come out of the box with a lot of crap that has to be
turned off or reconfigured in order to make them stable for music use.
It is a pain in the ass, and many people understandably choose not to
mess with it.  But it can be done, and I think there are plenty of
Real Musicians that would agree.

Jeff