Re: latency / transmission in FTS and SCALA.

Hi Jon,

I'm not sure that you will see an improvement particularly
over SCALA. Our programs are roughly similar in transmissino
rates.

It's probably going to be less than the maximum transmission
rate to send a note on along the midi cable (one note
per millisecond) - unless you have very fast usb midi or a
very slow computer.

But that's not so bad - after all 1ms is a thousandth
of a second which is pretty small - if you play two notes on a piano
a meter apart then if they are in sync for a listener
to one side then they will be out of sync for a
listener in front of the keyboard by 3 ms, or vice
versa. Though I know that if you mix the notes over
headphones or can position the microphone precisely
to within inches and get the performer to perform
for a listener at that exact location in space then
you could get a better synchronisation than
this.

It is possible to do better though. I did a
program that was very bare bones retuning app
which had better transmission rates. If you
notice anything more than a ms or so per note
then it would be a bug of some type and
I'd want to know about it and fix it.
You can get FTS to check the latency
of other programs or indeed itself to
find out where the delay is happening
- by relaying the notes via Midi Relay
which has a fast transmission rate of
0.15 ms per note on here - that would
vary on your computer speed - for
each midi relay in the chain. So by
subtracting that known amount and doing
it for a bunch of e.g. 10 notes you can
find out how much latency is due to
FTS or Scala, like this:

FTS Synchronisation tester -> Midi Relay
-> Program to test -> Midi Relay -> FTS

- two uses of midi relay adding up to
0.3 ms - then the relay through the
program to test so subtract 0.3 ms from
the result and you find out how much it is.

Anyway I'll be interested to know what you
reckon actually trying out FTS - maybe I've
improved the latency a bit from before.
I've done work on it certainly.

Robert