Revving up the Miditzer?

[Jim Henry]

Sorry to whipsaw the Miditzer community but it looks like the Miditzer not only won't be winding down for now but it may actually be revving up to complete the version 1.0 release! I doubt that this will happen overnight or even before the end of 2020. But discussions have started for resurrecting the development work that lead to the 216 1.0 alpha version that has been available in the Development Labs area of the Forum for many years. A number of people have been using the alpha version without issues for a long time.

One reason the alpha did not move forward to an official release is that it does not have the ability to resize the window. User reuel recently discovered that you can resize the two PNG files manually to run on screens other than the 1920x1080 required by the supplied files. If you have not used the alpha version because you do not have a 1920x1080 screen, then please see if you can now run the alpha version with the resized PNG files available in the Development Labs area.

The more important change in the alpha version is use of the current version of FluidSynth. While FluidSynth is a separate piece of software, most Miditzer users rely on FluidSynth to convert the MIDI message produced by the Miditzer into audio. The latency, time between pressing a key and hearing sound, has been a vexing problem for many users. Using the current version of FluidSynth and implementing a more direct connection to the computer's audio hardware should dramatically improve latency.

We need as many testers as possible so that the changes to FluidSynth are tested on a wide variety of audio hardware. If you have only been dropping by the Forum "once in a blue moon", I encourage you to stop by more often. Or subscribe to this topic using the "wrench" drop down at the upper left of this message. I will lock this topic and only unlock it briefly to post a reply announcing progress on the version 1.0 development.

Hope to see some of our long time users becoming more active!

[Jim Henry]

If you are using a 4:3 monitor, please leave a comment in the Development Labs section under Discussion so your needs are considered for the next release of the Miditzer.

[Jim Henry]

We are updating the Miditzer to be a 64 bit application. If you are unable to run 64 bit applications, please leave a comment in the Development Lab Discussion area so your needs are considered.