[sdiy] DIN Sync

[Colin f]

> Inside the TR-808 there is a masterclock, which provides that 
> all sounds 
> are triggered at the same time. This provides the perfect "banggg".
> 
> But in MIDI sending one "note on" takes 1 ms. Now lets take as an 
> example the first beat of a refrain in a nice produced pop 
> song: rhythm 
> section with hh, shaker, tambourine, BD, crash; then bass, 
> three notes 
> pad, three notes piano, one melody, one sequence.
> This sums to 14 ms. Added to this there will be some delays 
> in the sound 
> generators. This does not sound like "banggg" but like 
> "flabbadappablapplll".

I've done some blind testing of different delays between sounds and the
results were quite interesting.
You could try this yourself using a tool like PCABX - http://www.pcabx.com/

Florian's example of 14ms MIDI delay does indeed sound as bad as he
suggests, when sounds with a fast attack are used.
Percussion sounds are by far the most sensitive to MIDI delay.
I couldn't detect the 1ms of jitter introduced by the 303/606/808 internal
clock.
I found I could notice individual percussion sounds in a rhythm pattern when
they were offset by as little as 2 or 3 milliseconds.
But I wasn't noticing a difference in timing - I heard it more as a spatial
shift, which makes sense when you consider that the part of the auditory
system that can discriminate at such high temporal resolutions is doing so
to determine spatial location through inter-aural delay.
At what point this difference would be audible in a final mix is difficult
to say.
In the real world, up to 5ms of MIDI delay is probably inaudible to anyone
who isn't determined to hear it.
Which just means using multiple MIDI busses.

Cheers,
Colin f