This is a great idea. I'll add it to the todo list. As we briefly discussed, such a facility would probably be of interest to people using weird samples (e.g. reversed guitar sounds or whatever) that "reverse- decay" upto the down-beat.
This will pose an interesting design problem since sounds will have to be schedule-able earlier than they appear in the score (e.g. in theory a given instrument might be placed in bar 3, but would actually have to start playing in bar 1, or conceivably even before the beginning of the song?!).
Hm... I guess I am understanding his request differently then you. This is what I am hearing: Take a sampled sound of a shaker "shhhkk-shh". This sample was recorded at a particular tempo, let's say 144. The "shhhkk-shh" will work fine for a song with that or near 144 bpm. Now take it to a song that is 100 bpm. The "shhhkk-shh" will be too fast because the "-shh" comes too quickly on the downbeat. I think what he is asking is to be able to define a point in the sample to delay, hence dividing one sample into two parts and giving user control of when the "shh" follows the "shhhkk". The problem can be solved, for the most part, with two sound samples unless the "shh" doesn't fit into 1/12th of a beat. My apologies in advance if I am misunderstanding the technical aspect of what you are describing Ben. Cheers, Christoph