3 ms·

I have the equivalent of a $500,000+ studio from my childhood, all in my laptop. You are concerned about a 9600 baud protocol. There is zero 'shame' on the 'p

I have the equivalent of a $500,000+ studio from my childhood, all in my laptop. You are concerned about a 9600 baud protocol. There is zero 'shame' on the 'present future' when it comes to music production tools. It is like one of the hugest bright spots/biggest equalizers. Best thing I did was go ITB. No headaches. No hardware maintenance on obscure hardware. No MIDI limitations or even considering of my MIDI chains. Just music making.

bitwize 1y ago
Some musicians still like to play instruments -- for them and their listeners, ITB production is seen as a cheat and not real musicianship -- and for them the lack of a stable MIDI clock on today's hardware absolutely does matter. A trained musician can feel time difference as small as 1 ms. Any latency or jitter greater than that and a perfect track could be ruined. As an aside, all-digital workflows take the joy out of music being made in the moment, by ear and by feel. There is no replacement, for example, for a professional sound engineer adjusting a mix strictly by the sound in their headphones and the feel of the sliders under their fingers.
- handbanana_ 1y ago
  > A trained musician can feel time difference as small as 1 ms No they cannot.
  - deng 1y ago
    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14992027.2025.2486847 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14992027.2025.24...
    - Aldipower 1y ago
      Great paper. So the average psychophysical gap threshold is at ~2ms! This is lower then I expected tbh, but always suspected.
  - Aldipower 1y ago
    You always want latency or jitter as low as possible. Latency adds up in the chain. Instrument/Sequencer (2ms) -> Some digital effect (3ms) -> Digital Mixer (3ms) -> In-Ear monitor bridges an air gap with processing (6ms) Suddenly you have 14ms latency. Bad, but reality. So, every ms less is better. Regarding jitter, this is the worst, because the brain cannot adapt to the changes, whereas constant latency can be regulated somehow by the brain.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  I have a Novation SL MkII as my controller keyboard. It is a much more tactile experience than say a DX7 or other menu diving synth. It has faders built in for mixing. As someone who has done both I have so much more joy being all digital. I have access to so much that I never did before.
deng 1y ago
There's not one word in his post where he looks down on VSTs or anything. It's just how he likes to make music, and he is unhappy with the state of modern MIDI implementations. In fact, it's the exact opposite: you are shaming him for still using MIDI.
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  His Shame on the "present future" comment disagrees with you.
  - deng 1y ago
    Like C++, this cannot be parsed with a context-free grammar. The "present future" refers to No crashes what so ever and also no distractions by updates or "phone home applications" which is something I would guess most people would indeed see as shameful regarding our present future in software, but OTOH, this is HN, so who knows.
    - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
      My old synths crashed, and required physical maintenance. In addition I lost songs that failed to read off of the crude tape backup that my Quantitizer/sequencer used. I am much happier with my setup that I could have never have afforded outside the current future than my much lessor previous setup. This being HN I'm sure that are people that can afford to spend much more than me for gear so they might prioritize the 'minor differences' to them you list over no access at all, but I much prefer having access and price points I can actually afford.
      - deng 1y ago
        Good for you! I also sold all my external gear many years ago and never looked back. And this is all very interesting, but has nothing to do with the topic at hand: where is he shaming people for using VSTs instead of external gear, or saying people are cheapskates for using VSTs, or that his music is better? Because he still doesn't. He says USB MIDI has tons of jitter and modern music software phones home and crashes a lot, and Cubase on his Atari does neither, which from my memory is totally true.
aa-jv 1y ago
MIDI baud rate is 31250, not 9600.

bitwize 1y ago

Some musicians still like to play instruments -- for them and their listeners, ITB production is seen as a cheat and not real musicianship -- and for them the lack of a stable MIDI clock on today's hardware absolutely does matter. A trained musician can feel time difference as small as 1 ms. Any latency or jitter greater than that and a perfect track could be ruined. As an aside, all-digital workflows take the joy out of music being made in the moment, by ear and by feel. There is no replacement, for example, for a professional sound engineer adjusting a mix strictly by the sound in their headphones and the feel of the sliders under their fingers.

handbanana_ 1y ago
> A trained musician can feel time difference as small as 1 ms No they cannot.
- deng 1y ago
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14992027.2025.2486847 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14992027.2025.24...
  - Aldipower 1y ago
    Great paper. So the average psychophysical gap threshold is at ~2ms! This is lower then I expected tbh, but always suspected.
- Aldipower 1y ago
  You always want latency or jitter as low as possible. Latency adds up in the chain. Instrument/Sequencer (2ms) -> Some digital effect (3ms) -> Digital Mixer (3ms) -> In-Ear monitor bridges an air gap with processing (6ms) Suddenly you have 14ms latency. Bad, but reality. So, every ms less is better. Regarding jitter, this is the worst, because the brain cannot adapt to the changes, whereas constant latency can be regulated somehow by the brain.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
I have a Novation SL MkII as my controller keyboard. It is a much more tactile experience than say a DX7 or other menu diving synth. It has faders built in for mixing. As someone who has done both I have so much more joy being all digital. I have access to so much that I never did before.

deng 1y ago

There's not one word in his post where he looks down on VSTs or anything. It's just how he likes to make music, and he is unhappy with the state of modern MIDI implementations. In fact, it's the exact opposite: you are shaming him for still using MIDI.

_DeadFred_ 1y ago
His Shame on the "present future" comment disagrees with you.
- deng 1y ago
  Like C++, this cannot be parsed with a context-free grammar. The "present future" refers to No crashes what so ever and also no distractions by updates or "phone home applications" which is something I would guess most people would indeed see as shameful regarding our present future in software, but OTOH, this is HN, so who knows.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    My old synths crashed, and required physical maintenance. In addition I lost songs that failed to read off of the crude tape backup that my Quantitizer/sequencer used. I am much happier with my setup that I could have never have afforded outside the current future than my much lessor previous setup. This being HN I'm sure that are people that can afford to spend much more than me for gear so they might prioritize the 'minor differences' to them you list over no access at all, but I much prefer having access and price points I can actually afford.
    - deng 1y ago
      Good for you! I also sold all my external gear many years ago and never looked back. And this is all very interesting, but has nothing to do with the topic at hand: where is he shaming people for using VSTs instead of external gear, or saying people are cheapskates for using VSTs, or that his music is better? Because he still doesn't. He says USB MIDI has tons of jitter and modern music software phones home and crashes a lot, and Cubase on his Atari does neither, which from my memory is totally true.

aa-jv 1y ago

MIDI baud rate is 31250, not 9600.