Midi for Sansa Fuze V2 - RAM / PATCH Requirements

[coachn]

If I'm to have any success finding a suitable patch file set for my quest to play midi files on my device, I'm going to need information (I think).  If anyone can provide this, it would be appreciated.

When the midi program is loaded, is it loaded into RAM?  How much of the 8M of RAM is left?  What's available/necessary ...

• to store the patch files?
• to play a midi file?

Can anyone help out here?

Thanks in advance.

Coach

[saratoga]

When the midi program is loaded, is it loaded into RAM?  How much of the 8M of RAM is left? 

Probably about 5MB of total space are left over for loading the midi patch, maybe a little more.

What's available/necessary ...

• to store the patch files?
• to play a midi file?

I think it depends on the file.  Unfortunately I have no idea, and short of the digging into the midi player source code I don't know of any way to find out.

[coachn]

Thanks.  I'm making effort to take existing patches and reduce their overall size. 

Not knowing how much RAM is available or what's needed, it's a bit like bowling with a curtain in front of the pins. 

[siber_cat314]

I remember poking around in the source for the MIDI player because I got "MALLOC BARF"s when loading certain MIDI files.

After going through the code, I found that:
1. The MIDI file is scanned once, figuring out all the patches it will actually need to play. It then loads them (I'm guessing that the size of the patch is the amount of RAM it takes up).

2. All the remaining RAM is used as an audio buffer to play the MIDI. I'm not sure what the bare minimum is here.

As for how much RAM is available, that should be (again, I'm guessing) the amount listed on System > Debug > View Buffering Thread > alloc. It'll be the number on the right. Mine (on the Sansa e200v2 with 8mb RAM) says 2,890,848, so almost 3MB.
Oh! Plus the plugin buffer, which is... crap, I can't find it right now.

[coachn]

Thanks.  Most of my midis are about 50K or less. 

I'm thinking if I take some of the voices that are huge and switch them with smaller ones, I might actualy have a chance at this.

Although your numbers tell me that you're having problems with 8M ram.  What hope do I have with 4M ram?

[siber_cat314]

Well, let me know if you get it working. Or rather, let everyone know. With the reduced RAM on some of the recent flash-based players, the midi player plugin has suffered a bit. This will breathe a bit more life into it.

[coachn]

Will do. 

I'm going to, when I get some time, load a simple drum track to see if the bare minimum will actually play.  If it does... then add on from there.