Re: [iiwusynth-devel] RE: Hi - Very quiet list - my first post

[Chris Cannam]

On Tuesday 21 January 2003 21:46, Peter Hanappe wrote:
> No matter how many SoundFonts you load, the synthesizer remains
> just one synthesizer. So that's why there's only one ALSA MIDI
> device.

That part didn't surprise me -- I just couldn't see how it could 
accept multiple SoundFonts and only offer one ALSA device.  That's 
because I'd sort of assumed that most SoundFonts started at bank 
zero, program zero, and so it wouldn't be worth loading more than one 
onto the same device.

> When you load several SoundFonts, the banks and presets of the
> lastly loaded file can mask the banks and presets of previously
> loaded files. It works like a stack. I guess that's the problem you
> ran into.

Yes, I had formerly assumed that it simply didn't work with more than 
one SoundFont but your post led me to jump to the optimistic 
conclusion that it might be doing some clever stuff that allowed it 
to map (say) two GM bank-zero-plus-percussion SoundFonts onto one 
MIDI device, if only I knew how to get at the results.   Mostly just 
a misunderstanding on my part, though it'd be very nice if it could 
do that sort of magic.

> Last I tested, that's how Labs/Creative's SoundFont synth
> works.

Ah, I wouldn't know -- I had an AWE once but it only had 512K on it 
and you can't do much in that.


Chris