Not my experience. The expressive control is exponential, so either you clip on either end of the velocity spectrum, or you get discrete steps at the lower end.
I agree with the previous person that 256 levels of amplitude should be sufficient purely when it comes to velocity as long as these levels are spread appropriately (i.e. non-linearly). If the expressive control is exponential, that suggests to me that the data itself should be exponential.
I know literally nothing about drumming but I've no doubt there are plenty of other characteristics of a drum strike than velocity. Such as the mass being applied to the hit (e.g. is it being hit with the weight of the stick alone or is it the drummer's whole arm) or the location of the strike, or the release time.
Speaking as a producer who's programmed a lot of natural-sounding drum tracks...
There are plenty of variables other than velocity -- location on the drum head being the prime one, but there are others. Because of this, sampling an acoustic drum kit involves capturing a suitable number of random variations, and the end result is often gigabytes (i.e. hours of content) in size, even though each sampled hit is just a few seconds long. Not having enough variation in your sample set makes the programmed drums sounds unnatural, since excessive repetition doesn't gel with how we experience acoustic drums.
Certain variables are more important than others, though. One notable sound is the 'rim shot' which means striking the drum head and rim simultaneously, which causes all kinds of constructive interference and results in a very powerful sound. It's the holy grail of rock drumming. In drum programming, rim shots are often a separate stack of samples with its own velocity layers, each layer with a set of random variations.
The new attributes in the spec should make it possible - although not entirely easy - to include 2D position information with note on messages.
I would have been happier with a more general note spec that left the number of attributes and their resolution open and system-definable. This would allow 2D/3D/4D/etc control of note events, super-high resolution pitch definitions for microtonal support, and so on.
Bandwidth really isn't an issue any more, so there's no reason to limit the spec to a low common denominator.
Even so - 2.0 is better than the limitations of 1.0. So that's progress.
3D positioning was added to 1.0, described in RP-049 dated 2009-07-23. The parameters' MSB is 61 (0x3D, nice)
It bears some resemblance to OpenAL source parameters which is little surprise as Creative seems to have written it. Some obvious differences:
- sources' positions are sent in azimuth/elevation/distance, i.e. spherical coordinates instead of rectangular
- the positions are always relative to the listener instead of often having a listener that moves around in a stationary 3D world
- the source is now allowed to be both spatialized and stereo with extra parameters for angular distance between the "speakers", the roll angle of the pair, etc.
I located the PDF maybe on Google, maybe by accident more than a few years ago. (I think it was from MIDI.org even then) I had to make an account at MIDI.org in January just to look through the specs, and it was there. Now I can't find a link so I'm afraid it disappeared behind the MMA member paywall. <sigh> Here's to progress.
I'd agree with you for synthesizing, particularly with a master volume knob. But playing live my volume range is from audible to just me (So I can plan what people will hear), to easily the loudest thing going ;) Which is louder than you want to set your CD player :)
Also, I strongly believe in using dynamics throughout the set. The min-max range I use is one of the strongest impacts I have on what people feel. Tinkled whisper to roar
Though yes, like you, I love my other variables too like strike position, angle, etc
Remember that drums are two dimensional, but circular, so there is at least one more thing in their response: the timbre if the sound is affected by the radial location of the hit, which encourages different harmonics and hence a different sound. You can also hit parts other than the drumhead - and the rim and head (nearly) simultaneously.
If the velocity is a^x, with a a number like 1.1 and v a number between 0 and 255, I would agree. However, what I’ve seen is that 2 is twice as loud as 1 and 256 twice as loud as 128. That means soft passages become discretized and uneven.
