Velocity versus Amplitude

MIDI velocity expresses the dynamics with a linear range of 7 bits (from 0 to 127). This is an extremely serious limitation when doing synthesis.

In the example A the velocities are connected directly to the :amp slot.

In the example B the velocities are transformed in decibels by the db subpatch. Now the amplitude's range is bigger, but the resolution is smaller. The main problem is that we have always only 128 values to express the amplitude range.

It is very difficult to find a good mapping between velocities and amplitudes used for synthesis, and it would be safer to express amplitudes using the much larger resolution given by the bit depth of the final audio result.