“Rhythmic feel is a very subjective thing. Let us define feel as the relative placement in time of rhythmic elements. Roger Nichols — recording and mix engineer for Steely Dan and Donald Fagen, and inventor of the Wendel Drum Replacement System in 1978 — was said to have defined the limit of feel perception at around 250 microseconds for key rhythmic elements. My own experience, watching how certain producers place elements on a DAW project grid, leads me to the conclusion that the limit of feel perception is more like 100 microseconds. In any case, people who are very “feel-conscious” will agree that we are looking at timing shifts well under a millisecond as important and affecting rhythmic feel.”
