[sdiy] MIDI isn't musical : Flame bait?

[jdm at synthcom.com]

Don Tillman wrote:

>And if I slap five notes at *exactly* the same time MIDI that will
>spread out to 5 mSec.  That's audible.

Any decent MIDI synth does running status, which reduces the data per byte
from 3 to 2 bytes for notes after the first.  That makes 11 bytes X 3.2
msec per byte = 3.5 msec.

While writing Europa's arpeggiator software, I discovered that in practice
it's difficult to play 5 notes at *exactly* the same time. (maybe I should
have paid more attention during piano lessons ;)  So I put in a delay
factor of about a msec on the first note played, to catch the lagging
notes.  It's not noticeable, and makes a big difference when playing a DOWN
arpeggiator pattern.

If you want to bitch about timing, how many early MIDI synths had
underpowered CPUs which introduced even more latency until the note sounds?  

JDM