4 ms·

are you referring to a control protocol or a magical signal path effect? you could always do what you described since at least 20 years now, as MIDI need not d

are you referring to a control protocol or a magical signal path effect? you could always do what you described since at least 20 years now, as MIDI need not describe your synths parameters controls the issues with MIDI are not so much dynamics as timing resolution. 7 bits of dynamics might not sound like much but I'm not confident in any known musicians ability to express dynamics with more than 127 discrete levels lol... timing resolution of MIDI is great for more quantized musical styles, but for accurately capturing nuanced rubato performances this is the area that needs to be improved. the primary issue with timing in physical MIDI interfaces is timing STABILITY. this is arguably worse on a modern Mac with CoreMIDI than on an Atari 1020ST... This is directly a product of scheduler vagaries and even firmware. MIDI should be locked to the sample clock, perhaps updating as often as once a buffer or even less... (there was even a recent Macbook Pro that had it's audio clock jittering all over the place due to a power-management IC hardware rev, aka you can't download an update to fix THAT one, but I digress...)

nitrogen 7y ago
I share your disappointment in what seems like a downward slope in audio latency and jitter on modern hardware. My old AMD Athlon 64x2 with a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 was more consistent than my modern Core i7 workstation with a pro/prosumer audio interface.
K0SM0S 7y ago
> 7 bits of dynamics might not sound like much but I'm not confident in any known musicians ability to express dynamics with more than 127 discrete levels lol... Think one step further: when I hit a key on the piano, or a fret on a guitar, virtually all other strings resonate to some degree, however minutely, and this has to do with harmonic resonances, the geometry of the piano, etc. (Fourier + chaos). Now the only way to convey that kind of subtlety currently is either to digitize "as a whole" (microphone) or discretely (e.g. individual string sensors); but each has its tradeoff that you don't get from the other (no discreteness in your microphone, and the discrete approach probably won't render any accoustic feel, let alone room shape, etc. Basically, at a mathematical level, it seems like we should be able to get both worlds — a discrete yet complete description of an "instrument", which obviously has to be designed for the purpose. It's really breaking wide open the barrier between the physics of real-world tangible objects and the mathematics of software objects, computation for music. You may thus simulate analog stuff 'perfectly' (good enough to human ear), or quantize real analog also 'perfectly' (enough). Obviously you could do all of that now building your own stuff, instruments and software and protocols. But having it baked in MIDI is a game changer in terms of actual mainstream use, thus products to market.

nitrogen 7y ago

I share your disappointment in what seems like a downward slope in audio latency and jitter on modern hardware. My old AMD Athlon 64x2 with a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 was more consistent than my modern Core i7 workstation with a pro/prosumer audio interface.

K0SM0S 7y ago

> 7 bits of dynamics might not sound like much but I'm not confident in any known musicians ability to express dynamics with more than 127 discrete levels lol... Think one step further: when I hit a key on the piano, or a fret on a guitar, virtually all other strings resonate to some degree, however minutely, and this has to do with harmonic resonances, the geometry of the piano, etc. (Fourier + chaos). Now the only way to convey that kind of subtlety currently is either to digitize "as a whole" (microphone) or discretely (e.g. individual string sensors); but each has its tradeoff that you don't get from the other (no discreteness in your microphone, and the discrete approach probably won't render any accoustic feel, let alone room shape, etc. Basically, at a mathematical level, it seems like we should be able to get both worlds — a discrete yet complete description of an "instrument", which obviously has to be designed for the purpose. It's really breaking wide open the barrier between the physics of real-world tangible objects and the mathematics of software objects, computation for music. You may thus simulate analog stuff 'perfectly' (good enough to human ear), or quantize real analog also 'perfectly' (enough). Obviously you could do all of that now building your own stuff, instruments and software and protocols. But having it baked in MIDI is a game changer in terms of actual mainstream use, thus products to market.