[gmpi] Re: Topic 6: Time representation
- From: "Frederick Umminger" <Frederick_Umminger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 17:41:47 -0700
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Grigg [mailto:gmpi-public@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>
>That seems like a philosophical argument to me, not a technical one.
>Would you agree that there is some sufficiently fine stepped
>resolution beyond which, for a given tempo, in the context of a
>sampled audio DAW/sequencer or a MIDI-like instrument, the difference
>between a float representation of a time position and a stepped time
>position is inaudible to humans?
>
> -- Chris
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The technical argument is that for clarity and simplicity you should represent
data with its natural data type in the chosen implementation language, in
natural units. By not doing so you are unnecessarily adding extra
complications.
Some of these complications are: the need to convert to ordinary units of
musical time (e.g. beats) and back; the arbitrary conversion constant involved;
rounding issues when performing operations on musical time values; lack of
language support for fixed point; conversion between different tick bases, if
they are settable; user interfaces for settability; do ticks per second need to
evenly divide the sample rate? ; the video frame rate?; the buffer block rate?;
what happens if we need to support new rates in the future?; does this limit
the possible tempos?; possible rhythms?; etc.
It is just a lot simpler to represent musical time as musical time, rather than
as musical time multiplied by a large arbitrary constant and then quantized to
the nearest integer.
-Frederick Umminger
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