midi predely effect

[haraku]

Hi, I´m currently evaluating Flowstone and I like it a lot so far. But I have a question regarding a Delay element.
I´m trying to build a negative midi delay. Here is what I want to achieve:

scenario 1:

I want to build a delay effect (vst) that takes in incoming midi events and outputs the same events with a negative delay of - 80 ms. Is something like that possible? I looked at the existing delay elements, but they seem to be only for audio.

scenario 2:

The same effect, but with the option to translate incoming midi events into other midi events (e.g. notes -> cc).

If someone could provide an example, I would be really grateful.

Thanks in advance

greets

[trogluddite]

Hi haraku, welcome to the forum.

It might be possible - but to some degree that may depend on the host software that you're using.

Normally the MIDI events and audio are sent from a host track to the VST effect "just in time" as the song cursor plays back - at most, they might be sent one ASIO buffer in advance if your host is using latency compensation (most do). Other than that slight compensation, a VST plugin has no knowledge of where the MIDI events are in the track in advance.

However, FS does have a primitive called "Delay Compensation" that can force the host to send the data early - some plugins need this because they involve too much processing to do it "instantly".
I have used it a little bit when trying to sync' plugins to a hosts song position - but did find problems with some hosts, some of the time, not using that feature of the VST spec' correctly.

The "Delay Compensation" primitive doesn't seem to get used very often, so it would be worth testing whether it's going to have the desired effect before getting too deep into the programming.
I'm kind of intrigued by this - I don't recall anyone trying it before. Presumably you're using the demo version that doesn't export VST's, so give me a little while and I'll do a rough and ready test plugin so that we can test the principle...

[haraku]

Hi trogluddite,

thanks for stepping in. Yes, I´m using the Demoversion for the next few days. I didn´t try to export any vsts yet, but good to know it wouldn´t be possible anyhow (I just read the fine print on the demo download site).

It would be great if there would a possibility. I have a lot of external midi gear that I want to sync with Reaper. Unfortunatly Reaper has a lot of problems with that, most of them could be worked around if there were something like negative delay available. So if this works I plan to create several midi plugins with a negative delay.

Thanks a lot for your help

Greets

[trogluddite]

Seems promising - I just tried a test VST inside Reaper. Two MIDI tracks in parallel with exactly the same VST synth and MIDI data. When I insert the plugin on only one track, it pre-delays the MIDI perfectly.

Here's the test design - it's zipped so that I can include a VST .dll that you can test with your gear. Just type in a number from 0-1000 to set the pre-delay time in milliseconds.
The audio inputs and outputs on the VST are just dummies - some hosts don't like VST's with no audio connections - but that shouldn't be a problem if you're just driving a VST synth with it.

Pre Delay TEST.zip

(1.71 MiB) Downloaded 1064 times

If you get a reliable delay with this plugin then you'll have no problem meeting the rest of your needs - there are plenty of folks here with experience of "MIDI bending" and making smart interfaces.

Good luck!

[haraku]

Absolutely perfect! I tried several Predelay VSTs in the past, but non of them were able to work with midi. Your test plugin did exactly what I wanted.

Many Thanks for your efforts.

[trogluddite]

You're welcome - it's been an interesting experiment, and I reckon it could open up some interesting possibilities, even with virtual instruments, so thank you for a bit of inspiration!