MIDI and/or CV output to 'the World'

[eenixon]

Yes, of course, I forgot the kinesthetic side. It is important. Although, I personally don't remember anyone reminiscing too much about the physical appeal of agitating a film canister or sloshing with passion that print in the fixer bath. But I'm sure it was more holistic and subtle than I make out.

I think the question of integrating the various digital CV approaches is just basic commerce: there's no solid value proposition in it. In fact, there might be an argument that says: it just makes my competitive market larger and more elastic. Harder to sustain profits.

Much of tech innovation is based on the business theory of creating competitive barriers; it's only later after they've exhausted themselves in their niche that the notion of standardizing or integrating has appeal.

The MIDI standard is probably an example of this; it actually came in in the twilight of the first analog era. That said, I don't think anyone would have predicted the incredible durability of that standard. It keeps morphing, being enriched within its restrictions, e.g., the new Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression (MPE) standard. And they sneak real numbers in to replace those eight bit integers...

[dpcoffin]

Originally Posted by eenixon

…
Much of tech innovation is based on the business theory of creating competitive barriers; it's only later after they've exhausted themselves in their niche that the notion of standardizing or integrating has appeal.

...

Hopefully a few more 3rd-party devs will be willing to sacrifice some effort for the team in the meantime—kudos to the Beans

[eenixon]

An item of interest that seems relevant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=6mOAgqcM2eI

A comprehensive and well done overview of integrating Eurorack with VCV Rack or Softube modular -- Expert Sleeps ES-3 or Motu 8A.

[djb]

I suspect this falls under the category of "stuff no one will spend a lot of effort on because it's something that can be solved by MIDI 2.0", which will probably begin to materialize into real things over the next couple of years. Someone will create a protocol that is data-efficient when it can be, and high-resolution and fast when it needs to be. So until then, I wouldn't expect much in the way of virtual CV standardization.

[djb]

So I did some experimenting with a few things. First I tried Soundflower and Loopback. They work for sending CV as audio between VCV rack and your DAW, but performance is not good enough and it's not very stable. Then I tried using the virtual audio channels of my audio interface. My motu 16A lets me create more channels than I have actual physical I/O for, I guess for using with their AVB networking features. The 16A has a maximum of 32 physical in and out, but if I'm using thunderbolt I can create a setup with 128 I/O with virtual channels. I can use those virtual channels to send audio between VCV rack and ableton, with high performance and stability. So until there's a high performance, inter-app standard for sending audio and/or virtual CV, using the virtual channels of networkable audio interfaces (Dante-capable, or AVB) is a viable option. For now the biggest limitation for doing this with VCV rack is the fact that right now you can only have one active audio I/O module in a rack or it crashes. And the way you select banks of channels for those modules is not flexible. But the VCV dev community is receptive to suggestions and sometimes they are lightening-fast.

[djb]

Of course, I expect all of this to be rendered moot in the medium-term future. VCV rack is expected to be available as a plugin, perhaps before the end of the year and probably within six months. And over the coming year or two, I expect to start seeing MIDI 2.0 protocols that will be fast and hi-res enough to be totally adequate for virtual CV. Jim, I hope all the work you're doing on N5 will be adaptable to these new protocols. Perhaps you're waiting until concrete info about them is available? That's what I would do.