Dear Alex,
First of all, thank you all at Ableton for making such a great and different piece of software. And I think you're doing the right thing talking to and listening to your users, even though some of them can be quite difficult to please...
bensuthers wrote:um...alex...I think the assumption that you try and play the notes ahead of the beat so the sound is in time might be wrong....
that's my 2c.
I think so too. Because when you play a rhythmic part not only do you hear the sound, but there is also tactile feedback from pressing the keys or drumpads.
With a short audio delay I think it is more likely you would then experience what is known as "grace notes" or "flams" : Two notes played overlapping. In musical notation they are in fact on the same beat, with a tiny note before the normal note indicating that you play two notes "on top" of each other. Sort of the equivalent of using a couple of ms of audio delay to "fatten" a sound.
The Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information
http://www.nici.kun.nl/mmm/projects/domain7.html
Has links on the subject of Grace notes that may be interesting for the techies.
Quote: " A grace note is a musical ornament, that is, a short note played just before a main one. In the musical score the duration of these notes is not indicated, their actual length is left to convention and the performer. They are not part of the metrical hierarchy, they are overlaid on the rhythmical structure, as one would expect of an ornament."
And when I play music late at night with the sound turned down so I don't disturb the neighbours, the sound of the keys pressed on my keyboard is louder than the sound coming from the speakers.
To wrap it up: I think you would play right on the beat and experience your playing as such, even if the sound from the speakers had a slight delay.
Secondly I would like to point out that a timing delay of 13ms (which is the total latency on my system at 128 samples) almost equals a 16th note at a tempo of 180 BPM! It's easy to see that a little bit of human timing error or a little bit of "playing behind the beat" can easily lead to notes ending up in the wrong place, even if you quantise afterwards.
In fact, this is what has been happening to me all the time. I always quantise everything (I like it that way) and I have noticed with Live the notes quite often end up in the wrong place and I have to manually move them. With Logic (which I used for 8 years until I discovered Live) I never really had this problem.
I had been wondering why Live is so "unforgiving" quantising recorded Midi.
After reading this thread first I did some testing with record quantise off. And I have to agree with what other people are saying, that recorded Midi does not play back the way it was played.
Hope that is helpful, sorry for the lenghty post. Always looking forward to the next version!
