Overture 5 and VMS - update

When VMS V2 was introduced, I reported here a problem I had with the notation program Overture 5 and VMS. It seemed that when Overture 5 was started, it made a "connection" (perhaps not the proper term) to every destination MIDI device it found.

VMS V1 seemingly had what I described (perhaps inaccurately) as "multi-client MIDI ports", and so this greedy behavior by Overture 5 did not prevent other MIDI applications from then being able to use VMS.

When VMS V2 emerged, it seemingly did not at first have "multi-client" MIDI ports. Thus, when Overture 5 was stated, it established a "connection" to VMS (to every VMS instance, if there were more than 1) and then no other MIDI application could access VMS.

This happened to all VMS instances even if, on Overture's MIDI setup panel, some of those VMS instances where marked as "disabled", meaning that they could not be assigned as the destination device for one or more tracks of an Overture score. Overture 5 still "grabbed" them when it started.

I was never able to discuss this with Don Williams, the developer of Overture. He is in fact not speaking to me at all.

I know that over the ensuing period there have been many discussions here of matters in this general area, but I really didn't follow them. And I wasn't using Overture enough that the problem got in my way.

However, recently I looked into the status of this matter (I now have VMS 2.5.0 in place) and found that, although indeed when Overture 5 is started, it seemingly makes a "connection" to every VMS instance, this does not seem to inhibit other MIDI applications from accessing any of those instances and playing through them.

This item on the release notes of v2.1.0 sounds as if it might have to do with this:

       "Virtual MIDI devices can now be shared between process and opened multiple times. Each client will see each of them as it was the only one."

In any case, Claudio, thanks for neutralizing Overture's seemingly-bad behavior in this regard.

Best regards,

Doug

Doug Kerr wrote:

This item on the release notes of v2.1.0 sounds as if it might have to do with this:

       "Virtual MIDI devices can now be shared between process and opened multiple times. Each client will see each of them as it was the only one."

Yes, it is. From version 2.1.0 VMS is able to create multiple virtual instance for different MIDI client processes, so each one is now able to use VirtualMIDISynth #1,2,3,4 as it is the only client connecting to it (like Microsoft Synth allows).

Doug Kerr wrote:

In any case, Claudio, thanks for neutralizing Overture's seemingly-bad behavior in this regard.

It required some work but it also fixed the bad ehavior of other softwares, like some old games that keep the MIDI devices in use ;-)

Cheers
Claudio