- Mapping different samples to different velocities
- Longer envelope support
- Support for >128 samples
While XI is okay and should, by all means, continue to be supported, SFZ is the current standard. In many regards, it is the clearest descendant of the XI format. Unlike VST/AU/LV2 plugins, it is not platform-specific. Implementing SFZ would not limit Sunvox's portability any more than its existing XI support does.
As far as I know, there isn't an existing SFZ engine written in Java, so making it work in SunVox wouldn't be easy. But it might also ease development in the long run, because there would be less pressure to maintain an independent XI sample ecosystem.
Current cross-platform SFZ engines include:
sfizz (https://github.com/sfztools/sfizz)
SFZero-X (https://github.com/osxmidi/SFZero-X)
Both are written in C++.
SunVox will never be a normal DAW, and I understand if this is just too big to fit in the scope of what it is supposed to be. But I would enjoy having support for SFZ, if for no reason other than that it effortlessly integrates with the microtonal tuning features introduced in 1.9.3. Thank you!