Here's an interesting thing that I recently experienced, and I think you shuld know about it!

I'm not going to call it a fault because I think it is a result of the way that modern keyboards do everything digitally.

As I work with a drummer, I tend to use the Deep Purple mix method when creating midi files (everything louder than everything else!).

Therefore my Drum track (especially) is set to track volume 127. Other tracks are usually pretty loud so as to make sdome sonic impact.

THIS IS A MISTAKE!!!!!!

I now think all my track volumes should be set to 100 maximum.

Here's why:

If you have a lot of loud things going on, then the internal maths used to build to waveform that gets out via the D-A converts maxes out and you get (effectively) a peak limited wave coming out of the machine. I found this because I was recording a midifile (from the 2k phono outputs) using SoundForge and my Audigy card with the input level meters peaking at -6db (so I'm sure it isn't the soundcard limiting). On playback I like to watch the wave file go past with a fair bit of magnification (sad, eh) and I spotted these "truncated peaks".

I could remove the effect by reducing the Song Playback volume to about 60!

So now I'm carefully reducing the track volume in all my midi files so that the songs play back without "internal limiting" with the volume set to 100. I may even try this with the volumn at 127 to ensure no possibility of "limiting" under any circumstances.

What fun...