Talk:Metronome

Thoughts:

• Allow audio-only, visual-only and/or both; some languages can't provide audio outputs, but the principle components of a metronome can still be represented.
• Reword "However, the playing of the sounds should not interfere with the timing of the metronome, so a separation of the playing and timing processes may be required." Just say something simpler such as "the beat indicator should remain true to the selected tempo." Anything more there is either vague, overspecification or unnecessary, IMO.

--Michael Mol 14:33, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Given that metronomes are aimed at helping people when playing music, the timings really don't need to be perfect. A millisecond timer should do fine provided it is coupled properly to an absolute time source so the workload of sound and fury GUI doesn't interfere. (On the other hand, a timer on the scale of a second — usually the most available on the system — is definitely not sufficient.) –Donal Fellows 08:11, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What I was trying to get at with the point about timings is that you can't allow the work involved in display or audio updates to cause the timer to drift. That seemed the obvious intent of the "separate processes" wording. Certainly, the timings don't need to be perfect; <2ms jitter is probably unnoticeable, but that amount of jitter should hold true comparing events 600 seconds apart as well as 250ms apart. --Michael Mol 18:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)