The main paramter files here here are `looptest" and "looptest_60s. There 
are some minor variants of this in the `others' subdirectory, but I 
don't see why they'd be useful to anyone except me.

"looptest" runs for about 4 S, and looptest_60s runs for about 60 S. 
The latter requires the expanded limits in FTAP 2.1.07.

run_looptest.sh will run 10 interations of looptest_60s, and run_loopcheck.sh
will report the mean and standard deviation between key stroke events (using
the Python program loopcheck.py). It should be close to 1 ms, or a little 
less, with low variance. See the Reference Manual for more detail.

This directory contains parameter files for testing FTAP's performance;
you should probably be somewhat familiar with FTAP (like being able to interpret
the output files) before doing this. The main configuration for doing this 
is connecting the MIDI output port back to the MIDI input port with a cable; 
then FTAP output messages will be immediately interpreted as keystroke messages,
and FTAP can be tested under a very high data throughput situation. This will 
show up potential problems with your MIDI card and/or driver; if those are 
not a problem, and you have a reasonably fast machine, and you run FTAP 
with root privileges, these benchmarks should verify to you that FTAP 
performs with millisecond precision up to the bandwidth allowed by MIDI 
(1 message/millisecond).  These benchmark programs can also be used to get 
some feel for the effect on performance of various changes: running Linux 
as single or multi-user, running an X-server, running FTAP with and without 
root privileges, etc.

If your MIDI interface has female connectors, you can set up the loop with a 
standard MIDI cable; if the MIDI interface has male connectors, you will need 
a female-female MIDI connector which is harder to find (I had someone make 
one for me. In 2016, a Hosa GMD-108 connector will probably work).

Evaluating performance is best done by inspection of the output file. Since
you might mistrust whether the output file is an accurate reflection of actual
time (though see Finney, 2001b and the programs under "utils/gettod_test)", some of these benchmarks are designed to be compared with externally 
measured elapsed time (e.g., using the Linux "time" program or shell 
command). This actual elapsed time will include FTAP startup overhead and 
cleanup and file writing at the end, something which is really not part of 
the benchmark time per se.  It is also worth looking at the scheduling
diagnostics that FTAP prints to the screen (and also write to the file).

