NokNod Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 (edited) Anyone changed the default sequencer resolution from 960 PPQ if so did Cakewalk perform better or worse ? Edited July 26, 2021 by Guerilla Genus fix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noel Borthwick Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 It should make no significant difference. Internally the MIDI engine runs at a higher resolution than 960 PPQ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NokNod Posted July 26, 2021 Author Share Posted July 26, 2021 3 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said: It should make no significant difference. Internally the MIDI engine runs at a higher resolution than 960 PPQ. this is confusing, does this mean the Midi engine is always operating at a high resolution even when the project PPQ is reduced to say for example 96PPQ ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NokNod Posted July 26, 2021 Author Share Posted July 26, 2021 additionally, is there a relationship between the midi record input quantize function and project PPQ ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bitflipper Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 I'd guess probably not, since you're usually quantizing to a musical interval, not ticks. An eighth note remains an eighth note regardless of how many gradations there are between them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NokNod Posted July 26, 2021 Author Share Posted July 26, 2021 If I'm understanding this right, even at 96PPQ a quantization setting of 1/8 will always snap the MIDI event to the nearest 1/8 note interval, but if quantization were disabled at 96PPQ there would be fewer tics between the 1/8 note intervals where a MIDI event may occur as opposed to 960PPQ ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RBH Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 (edited) 11 minutes ago, Guerilla Genus said: If I'm understanding this right, even at 96PPQ a quantization setting of 1/8 will always snap the MIDI event to the nearest 1/8 note interval, but if quantization were disabled at 96PPQ there would be fewer tics between the 1/8 note intervals where a MIDI event may occur as opposed to 960PPQ ? Correct - with no quantizing - the resolution of timing is greater. Edited July 26, 2021 by RBH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noel Borthwick Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 PPQ is a remnant of legacy MIDI from the 90's. In CbB PPQ is really "display PPQ" internally the resolution is much higher than MIDI. We have a 48 bit resolution for MIDI which is very accurate even for very slow tempos (eg 8 bpm). We updated this in the very first SONAR version back in 2000. 1 hour ago, Guerilla Genus said: additionally, is there a relationship between the midi record input quantize function and project PPQ ? No. The project PPQ should only be the display PPQ as noted above. It should not affect the resolution of data recorded. You should be able to verify this by a test. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noel Borthwick Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 8 minutes ago, RBH said: Correct - with no quantizing - the resolution of timing is greater by 10 x, I believe. Not quite. Our internal "PPQ" if you could call it that is 2 to the power of 27 (134,217,728) This is our high res subdivision of a quarter note. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noel Borthwick Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 45 minutes ago, bitflipper said: I'd guess probably not, since you're usually quantizing to a musical interval, not ticks. An eighth note remains an eighth note regardless of how many gradations there are between them. Right Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NokNod Posted July 26, 2021 Author Share Posted July 26, 2021 ok got it, current day PPQ is really about sequencer display resolution, not sequencer timing resolution....my head is spinning Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msmcleod Posted July 26, 2021 Share Posted July 26, 2021 29 minutes ago, Guerilla Genus said: ok got it, current day PPQ is really about sequencer display resolution, not sequencer timing resolution....my head is spinning This was useful in the early 90's when people were migrating from older sequencers. For example, I used Music-X on the Amiga before moving to Cakewalk which had a resolution of 192 ticks per quarter note. I spent most of my time in Music-X's event view, so being able to set Cakewalk's ticks per quarter note to 192 made the transition much smoother when using Cakewalk's Event View., until I slowly changed my workflow to use Cakewalk's other features. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noel Borthwick Posted July 27, 2021 Share Posted July 27, 2021 55 minutes ago, Guerilla Genus said: ok got it, current day PPQ is really about sequencer display resolution, not sequencer timing resolution....my head is spinning Well not in general. The PPQ concept itself is still valid though its an old term - its a measure of accuracy or sub divisions of a quarter note. In the old MIDI days, the highest subdivision was 960 PPQ before computers could keep up. Since then most DAW's can handle far greater accuracy so the subdivisions are much more. Rather than get rid of the PPQ setting, concept we retained it such that the setting controls the display and editing resolution of MIDI. For example in the UI where you enter values in MBT we convert from our internal high resolution time to MBT using the display PPQ. That's one example where you will see the impact of that setting. Its also used when exporting MIDI files - i.e. internal timestamps of notes will be quantized to the display PPQ. So the PPQ also affects outgoing data. Another way to explain this is that our internal representation of MIDI uses high resolution timestamps but when its used in the UI, or in editing operations its quantized to the display PPQ. Hope I haven't confused you further Its a bit confusing I agree and could probably be documented better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NokNod Posted July 27, 2021 Author Share Posted July 27, 2021 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tparker24 Posted July 27, 2021 Share Posted July 27, 2021 I always use a PPQ of 600, just so that note durations are in nice, round numbers, and easier for me to work with: 600 Quarter 400 Quarter Triplet 300 8th 200 8th Triplet 150 16th 100 16th Triplet 75 32nd 50 32nd Triplet 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Fogle Posted July 27, 2021 Share Posted July 27, 2021 What a great and educational discussion! @Guerilla Genus, thanks so much for posting your initial question and poll. @msmcleod and @Noel Borthwick, thanks for explaining the MIDI innards of CbB. Hopefully, @Morten Saether will see this thread and will be able to add some of this information to the Cakewalk Reference Manual. @bitflipper, @RBH and @tparker24 thanks for your input and keeping the path on course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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