5 ms·

> This is extremely misleading. Sure, the velocity input into your synth is going to be at 7-bit resolution, but at soon as the synth has it, it can play anythi

> This is extremely misleading. Sure, the velocity input into your synth is going to be at 7-bit resolution, but at soon as the synth has it, it can play anything it wants at whatever volume it wants to based on how you have configured it. There's nothing about the external 7-bit implementation that is really limiting the dynamics of the synth itself. I don't agree. Musical sounds are evolving, so one should not be seeing a note as "keeping a value zero-order sampled for a period" -- consider tremolo, sliding, etc. When it's one more dimension to consider than just a point, the limitation of 7bit is shown. Consider a lowpass filter commonly found on a synth. Play a note, and turn the knob all the way down. On an analog device the transition will be smooth and you'll hear the filter gradually "closing down". If the knob is mapped to 0-127, you can easily hear the steps (sounds like discrete i----a----o----u----n----). Sure there are non-standard 14bit encodings (NRPN), but that's manufacturer-specific, and doesn't communicate. The article is right that MIDI 2.0 will make it feel a lot more "analog".

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
There are very few patches where the difference between static filter settings of 64 and 65 is audible and it's literally physically impossible to set a typical panel knob with that level of precision. (It's easier on a medium-sized slider and definitely possible on a long-throw fader, but most synth panels don't have those.) And it's incredibly easy - and fairly standard now - to add a little interpolation to continuous parameters that are varying. MIDI 2.0 won't make anything feel more "analog" because virtually no one cares about those kinds of performance possibilities, so most manufacturers won't implement them. Many of the changes in 2.0 have been driven by the ROLI people. I love my Seaboard, but it's very much a minority instrument for a tiny minority of players, and there's no reason to believe any of the changes to the spec going to make a transformative difference to mainstream music. They're mostly relevant for edge cases where people have already been getting by with 1.0 without extreme pain, but some enhancements may be welcome.
- shmageggy 7y ago
  > There are very few patches where the difference between static filter settings of 64 and 65 is audible Parent wasn't talking about a static patch, but a filter sweep. I encounter audible discretion girl often and many other people have too. Just because it doesn't show up in your workflow doesn't mean it's not a significant limitation for a lot of people.
- v-yadli 7y ago
  Contrary to your experience, I find many patches have a narrow sweet spot where the transients created by a overdriven filter produce rich and mesmerizing textures. Turn up Q and try again? :)
duskwuff 7y ago
> Sure there are non-standard 14bit encodings There's nothing nonstandard about 14-bit encodings. Pitch wheel and all of the standard controls are 14-bit.
- vortico 7y ago
  For completeness, there are a few 14-bit MIDI control standards that I'm aware of, and all of them have major disadvantages. - MPE pitch wheel: You can only have 16 controls with this method. Otherwise, it's an efficient protocol. - NRPN/RPN: Requires 4 MIDI messages to send a single value in a proper way (control number, MSB, LSB, NULL control number). Technically you can do it in 3, or 2 if the control number doesn't change. - CC MSB/LSB: Plows over normal CC messages so you need to explicitly set up your controller / synth to agree with each other. As far as I know the order of MSB/LSB is not defined by any standard, and IMO this makes it a broken standard. - DX7-style SysEx: Honestly this is my favorite, but because system exclusive messages are supposed to be... system exclusive, nothing else uses this standard (except for some DIY projects I've seen).
  - djaychela 7y ago
    > - CC MSB/LSB: Plows over normal CC messages so you need to explicitly set up your controller / synth to agree with each other. As far as I know the order of MSB/LSB is not defined by any standard, and IMO this makes it a broken standard. This was set up to a degree with General MIDI 2, and I've found a -lot- of synths in the past that follow it - even to the point of implementing LSB on other controllers that are not part of the standard. This is in the murky past, however, maybe 20 years+ ago...
    - vortico 7y ago
      CC MSB/LSB is still my absolute least favorite method because you have to tell customers to manually set up their DAW/synth to handle each command, or to load a preset/config that does this for them. Of course, customers are going to mess this up, so you end up with lots of tech support issues of the form "I moved a knob on my controller, and it's setting both CC 7 Volume and CC 39, which I've already configured to control filter attack."

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

There are very few patches where the difference between static filter settings of 64 and 65 is audible and it's literally physically impossible to set a typical panel knob with that level of precision. (It's easier on a medium-sized slider and definitely possible on a long-throw fader, but most synth panels don't have those.) And it's incredibly easy - and fairly standard now - to add a little interpolation to continuous parameters that are varying. MIDI 2.0 won't make anything feel more "analog" because virtually no one cares about those kinds of performance possibilities, so most manufacturers won't implement them. Many of the changes in 2.0 have been driven by the ROLI people. I love my Seaboard, but it's very much a minority instrument for a tiny minority of players, and there's no reason to believe any of the changes to the spec going to make a transformative difference to mainstream music. They're mostly relevant for edge cases where people have already been getting by with 1.0 without extreme pain, but some enhancements may be welcome.

shmageggy 7y ago
> There are very few patches where the difference between static filter settings of 64 and 65 is audible Parent wasn't talking about a static patch, but a filter sweep. I encounter audible discretion girl often and many other people have too. Just because it doesn't show up in your workflow doesn't mean it's not a significant limitation for a lot of people.
v-yadli 7y ago
Contrary to your experience, I find many patches have a narrow sweet spot where the transients created by a overdriven filter produce rich and mesmerizing textures. Turn up Q and try again? :)

duskwuff 7y ago

> Sure there are non-standard 14bit encodings There's nothing nonstandard about 14-bit encodings. Pitch wheel and all of the standard controls are 14-bit.

vortico 7y ago
For completeness, there are a few 14-bit MIDI control standards that I'm aware of, and all of them have major disadvantages. - MPE pitch wheel: You can only have 16 controls with this method. Otherwise, it's an efficient protocol. - NRPN/RPN: Requires 4 MIDI messages to send a single value in a proper way (control number, MSB, LSB, NULL control number). Technically you can do it in 3, or 2 if the control number doesn't change. - CC MSB/LSB: Plows over normal CC messages so you need to explicitly set up your controller / synth to agree with each other. As far as I know the order of MSB/LSB is not defined by any standard, and IMO this makes it a broken standard. - DX7-style SysEx: Honestly this is my favorite, but because system exclusive messages are supposed to be... system exclusive, nothing else uses this standard (except for some DIY projects I've seen).
- djaychela 7y ago
  > - CC MSB/LSB: Plows over normal CC messages so you need to explicitly set up your controller / synth to agree with each other. As far as I know the order of MSB/LSB is not defined by any standard, and IMO this makes it a broken standard. This was set up to a degree with General MIDI 2, and I've found a -lot- of synths in the past that follow it - even to the point of implementing LSB on other controllers that are not part of the standard. This is in the murky past, however, maybe 20 years+ ago...
  - vortico 7y ago
    CC MSB/LSB is still my absolute least favorite method because you have to tell customers to manually set up their DAW/synth to handle each command, or to load a preset/config that does this for them. Of course, customers are going to mess this up, so you end up with lots of tech support issues of the form "I moved a knob on my controller, and it's setting both CC 7 Volume and CC 39, which I've already configured to control filter attack."