Re: [iiwusynth-devel] Some FluidSynth notes

[Peter Hanappe]

Josh Green wrote:


> 4. Default reverb is pretty weak. I remember the suggestion before of
> having some presets for Reverb and Chorus. I've seen lists of
> Reverb/Chorus effects for MIDI devices before. Perhaps something like:
>
> Reverb
> --------
> Small Room
> Medium Room
> Large Room
> Short Hall
> Long Hall
> Plate Reverb
> Delay Reverb
>
> Chorus
> --------
> Chorus 1
> Chorus 2
> Chorus 3
> etc.
>
> Having these presets built in the API would allow programs like Swami to
> query and select them (leaving the actual values under the control of
> FluidSynth).

As you suggested, I've made some changes to the settings (not yet in
CVS though). In particular, a string settings can have a list of
possible options. It's now also possible to change a string settings
in real-time. This means you could write:

  iiwu_setting_setstr("fx.reverb.preset", "Small Room");

and the effects would be immediate. You can retreive the list of options
with 'iiwu_settings_foreach_option', which takes a.o. a callback
function as argument.


> It seems important to me to get the synthesis of FluidSynth right before
> releasing an official version. FluidSynth is setting a standard by which
> SoundFont files will be created, so it would also be good to compare its
> synthesis to other devices. It would not be very nice to have to
> radically change some part of the synthesis later that would cause
> created banks to sound different.

That's a very important point indeed. People are starting to use
FluidSynth to make music and we have to give a guarantee their work
will sound the same for all versions of the synthesizer.


> A lot of this API work will make the
> addition of other patch formats feasable 

That's great Josh! Right now it's difficult to keep up with the
development of FluidSynth, so I haven't had much time to check
out the latest changes in Swami. I hope to get there when version
1.0 is out the door.

Cheers,
Peter

> Cheers!
>         Josh Green