Windows 10 Store apps and VMS

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Posts: 3
Joined: December 17, 2015 - 22:17
Windows 10 Store apps and VMS

Hello, I represent Musicnotes.com. We are trying to allow MIDI playback of our sheet music with the Windows 10 store app that we are currently developing. We've got it working with the GS wavetable, but we'd like to allow the audio quality improvement available through VirtualMidiSoft, especially since we have a pretty good soundfont that we are shipping with our mobile apps. We'd like to be able to list VMS as an output device option.

Our OLD windows app (made many, many years ago with MFC) can pick up an installation of VirtualMidiSoft (it uses the C++ function midiOutGetDevCaps), so I don't think I've installed VMS incorrectly. However, when we try to find it with the new C# code, the only "MidiOutPort" detected is the GS Wavetable. Is there something special that you are aware of that we need to install or include in our store app in order to detect VMS?

If this is not something that should be working yet (i.e. feature request, not bug), I will be more than happy to move this thread to the other forum.

--Christina

Extra Info, in case you are not familiar with the Universal Windows Apps MIDI methods:

The recommended way to send midi messages in Windows 10 store apps involves the Windows 10 SDK extension "Microsoft General MIDI DLS for Universal Windows Apps", so that's what we're using. Below is a link to the github sample project that shows how to use it. If there's another way we should be using, we'll be happy to switch.

https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-universal-samples/tree/master/Sampl...

 

Posts: 3
Joined: December 17, 2015 - 22:17
Re: Windows 10 Store apps and VMS

Further information:

loopMIDI can create Windows 10 Store (UWA) detectable MIDI out ports (but does not synthesize audio), and I don't think there's a way to set loopMIDI as the input MIDI port for your software. I also don't see how to set VirtualMIDISynth as the default out port for loopMIDI. So *SIGH*.

From what I can tell, a detectable MIDI out port shows up in the Device Manager under "Software Devices" and in the registry under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses\{6dc23320-ab33-4ce4-80d4-bbb3ebbf2814}

Heh.

This is looking more and more like a feature request, sorry.

--Christina

Posts: 1972
Joined: March 25, 2012 - 01:19
Re: Windows 10 Store apps and VMS

I have little-to-no experience about Windows 10 Store apps, so I can only guess what's going on before trying it on my side.

I suppose that W10SA apps enumerate only DirectSound/DirectX compatible devices, and VMS is not.
Going the DirectX way is really hard, because it involves a huge lot of work.
Again, other projects already tried it and got back to the (and fastest and latency-free) old WinMM.

Will have a look at it, but it will require a bit because it needs a Win10 + VS2015-SP1 testing machine.

Actually all my developing time is dedicated to the release of first Beta1 of VMS2.x, hope you can wait...

Posts: 3
Joined: December 17, 2015 - 22:17
Re: Windows 10 Store apps and VMS

That's fine! As a developer, I understand time constraints, especially with a product that is not exactly earning you money :).

I actually tested the 2.x alpha as well, just to see if that fixed it, but no-go there. We're just a little ticked off (with Microsoft) that we can get good sound via soundfonts for Andriod, iOS, and Mac... but not for windows!

--Christina