Re: [jokosher-devel] Fwd: Open Multitrack Audio Format

["Karoliina Salminen" <karoliina t salminen gmail com>]

Hi,

> I think the biggest problem with this kind of format, or at least the way
> that Jokosher does it, is that the file sizes are _huge_ and not really in a
> format that's good for distribution.

For collaborating with music collegues, this is acceptable. As long as
the file is somehow transferrable (several gigabytes rather than
several terabytes) it is fine. The transfer takes a lots of time but
it does not matter as long as the time is reasonable (not more than
tens of hours, hundreds of hours is too long).

> the bigger that bandwidth becomes ;) This is particularly because of the
> unlimited undo stuff that Jokosher does, which means that all files are
> stored in their original state.

I think the undo should not be stored on a file going to transferred
to a music collegue in any case. Example scary scenario: you do
something really stupid on some tracks ("WTF! Is Karoliina really that
bad player??!!!", then you undo them and record something else
instead. Then you send it over to your friend, your friend does the
undo and wow, your master piece is 5 minutes from being online...

This is great idea, but the format should be supported not only by
Jokosher, but every program, especially because Jokosher is still
(well, I am impatiently waiting Jokosher to become the ultimate
musician's tool that would do everything that Cakewalk Sonar does and
more...) lacking many of the features I would need in order to be able
to use it (simultaneous audio and midi recording and playback, stereo
tracks etc., named tracks instead of the current "instrument" names
which are not intuitive for my use at all - my average composition
uses 60 different stereo tracks (some tracks are muted though and not
all of them play simultaneously usually) which have different names
and all of them originate from hardware synthesizers  - having a dozen
of tracks with names "drums" "voice" "guitar" etc. would not make life
very easy to navigate on that kind of environment and also, I have one
midi track per one audio track usually because I am so bad player that
I usually want to record as midi first, then go to event list editor,
fix the playing glitches, then let it play it back so that the
software plays the hardware synthesizer and records the next audio
track at the same time (and thus converts or "renders" the glitch-free
midi track into stereo audio track)).

Btw, couldn't the same format to be used for lossless multichannel
audio distribution - meaning e.g. 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 10.2 configurations.
Of course I see that nothing technically would prevent that, but I
mean that major players (xine, mplayer, whatever) would need to
support that and be able to send it out from the 5.1 / 7.1 /whatever
outs of the sound card or alternatively route it out from e.g. a 8 in
/ 8 out audio interface. Now the problem is that lossless multichannel
material is not available. But for example I could mix in e.g. 5.1 if
there would be just a open format that would support it and a software
that would support that format and would have the capability for
mixing in multichannel.

Best Wishes,
Karoliina