Re: MIDI dynamics problem

[Mats Bengtsson]

The values are customizable, see the file scm/midi.scm for the
default settings.

I can confirm the same problem on a Crystal Semiconductor
sound card. With the software sequencer timidity, the differences
are smaller, though. On the other hand, a good orchestra would
maybe make an even bigger difference between pp and ff, for
example. That's why it's so hard to listen to classical music
in your car, for example. Also when proof-listening to a piece,
it's probably better to compress the dynamics. Could we have an
compressed_dynamics option (set true by default)?

Of course, one problem is that this particular example does
not assign any dynamics at all to the left hand part or the
song, just a pp in the right hand, which is much softer than
the default dynamics.

   /Mats

Silas S. Brown wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm having a major problem with dynamics in MIDI files.  On
> my Yamaha SW60XG MIDI card, the difference between quiet and
> loud is way too large (many orders of magnitude), so the
> quiet is inaudible and the loud is deafening.
>
> As an example of how bad this sounds, here is standchen.midi
> (downloaded from the v2.0 documentation "examples" section)
> played on my card and recorded to OGG format.
> http://access.ucam.org/nobackup/bugdemo.ogg (248k)
> (available for limited time - please take a copy if needed)
>
> I think the velocity levels of the different dynamics should
> be customisable, or at least their range should be
> customisable.  Or at least it should be set to less than it
> is at the moment.  XG MIDI cards are quite common.
>
> Best wishes,            Silas