Surely there is more to it than that. Instruments are implemented very differently indeed in different computer music systems. Issues that differ include: Instrument voice allocation -- preallocated, or dynamically allocated (best)? Voice control -- per voice, or per instrument, or both (best)? Fixed set of performance-time parameters, or variable set? Precision and units of parameters (especially pitch, time, and loudness), also whether and how they vary over time. The more the set of parameters form a linear space, the better. Also, how closely this follows MIDI semantics. Tuning systems -- present or not, if so, how implemented. Wavetable synthesis -- is there a pool of shared wavetables, or does each instance have its own tables? Sub-instruments -- can an instrument contain its own pool of various types of instruments? "Throttling" and "reduced precision" for control of CPU load -- present or not, if so how done? I will try to come up with some use cases for instruments dealing with some of these issues. Original Message: ----------------- From: Andy andy@xxxxxxxxxx Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:28:40 +0100 To: gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [gmpi] Re: 3.17 Instruments Tim, I'm just starting to have a look at this but for a start off is this not a little tautological ? " 4.34. More on Instruments Instruments are just ordinary plugins which happen to implement the necessary interfaces to be played as an instrument." Andy C ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Generalized Music Plugin Interface (GMPI) public discussion list Participation in this list is contingent upon your abiding by the following rules: Please stay on topic. You are responsible for your own words. Please respect your fellow subscribers. Please do not redistribute anyone else's words without their permission. Archive: //www.freelists.org/archives/gmpi Email gmpi-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx w/ subject "unsubscribe" to unsubscribe -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Generalized Music Plugin Interface (GMPI) public discussion list Participation in this list is contingent upon your abiding by the following rules: Please stay on topic. You are responsible for your own words. Please respect your fellow subscribers. Please do not redistribute anyone else's words without their permission. Archive: //www.freelists.org/archives/gmpi Email gmpi-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx w/ subject "unsubscribe" to unsubscribe