>>30Got any citations for these?
No, I get this from my experience with sampling. The good soundfonts with full range all start at 2GB.
The math is simple enough:
32bit audio (4bytes) * 48000 kHz sampling rate * 2 seconds * 88 notes * 2 channels (stereo) * 128 strike velocities = 8.583168e+09 bytes.Feel free to tweak those numbers. Two second samples might be a bit high for some instruments, but one second isn't enough even for drums. You probably don't need stereo. Strike velocity is more important than you think.
Is there any reason why we don't algorithmically reproduce this information rather than capture such range of data for use in reproducing natural instruments?
We have been using it, just not everywhere. Why? Because not everyone knows how to do it. Because few samplers support it. Because it's time consuming, expensive.
For my part, I never wished my samplers had this feature. I don't want to painstakingly record something note for note at different velocities. I want to record sounds with an MPC and bang on the drum all day.