[iiwusynth-devel] RE: Not so quiet list anymore [was RE: Hi - Very quiet list - my first post]

[Mark Knecht]

Peter,
   I think between this note and the one you sent a few minutes ago to
Chris, I have a much better idea of the capabilities of both fluid-synth and
soundfonts in general. Indeed, I had no idea that the multi-channel
capabilities were somewhat coded into the soundfont itself. If I download
two soundfonts from some online sources, and I want to use them at the same
time, as two separate instruments, it has not been clear to me how I go
about doing that. Indeed, when I've tried, it hasn't work, as best I could
tell. Now I know why. Thanks.

   I would think that the ability to take a specific soundfont and then
assign it to a specific MIDI channel would be a great feature for
fluid-synth. The other feature that I would like to see is the ability to
limit the number of voices on a given soundfont/MIDI channel. This would
allow me to 1) control how polyphonic a given instrument sounds, and 2)
manage my CPU's power in ways that suit my needs.

   Couple these two features with the velocity sensitive samples that we
were discussing yesterday and fluid-synth then approaches a lot of the
functionality of something like GSt. (Missing ADSR's, filters, etc. on each
voice, but practically speaking I don't have a lot of time to use those much
anyway.)

   Thanks for all the help!

Cheers,
Mark

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Hanappe [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 3:23 PM
> To: Mark Knecht
> Cc: iiwusynth devel; address@hidden
> Subject: Not so quiet list anymore [was RE: Hi - Very quiet list - my
> first post]
>
>
>
>
> Mark Knecht wrote:
> > Peter,
>
> >
> >    I think Chris and I were under the impression (certainly I was) that
> > Fluid-synth handled only a single MIDI channel at a time. If I now
> > understand correctly, you are telling me it actually can handle
> 16 different
> > channels and 256 simultaneous voices all at the same time? If
> this is the
> > case then completely covers my previous question.
>
> 16 channels is the default. You could set it up with, say 128 channels,
> but that doesn't make sense if you use external MIDI hardware.
>
>
> >    I need to determine how to map each specific soundfont to a
> specific MIDI
> > channel. What I understood from the command line was that I
> entered a list
> > of options, and then a list of soundfonts. I did not see how to
> associate
> > the first soundfont with MIDI channel 1, the second with MIDI
> channel 2, the
> > third with 3, etc. I still don't. I think (possibly) that's
> what Chris was
> > asking about.
>
> You can't associate soundfonts, or rather the presets in the soundfont,
> to channels *directly from the command line*. Maybe that's something
> we should add (never thought about it). There are two other ways to
> do it. The iiwusynth has a command line interface once
> it's started. The commands you might want to look at are 'fonts',
> 'inst, 'channels', and 'select' (the 'help' command can give more
> details about these). In particular, the select command allows you
> to select a preset for a specific channel. The second way is to send
> a program-change MIDI message, possibly in combination with a
> bank-select MIDI message. If there's a configuration you use a lot, you
> can save all the select commands in a file, one per line, and then
> load the file using the 'source' command.
>
>
>
> >    I need to get some soundfonts and do some experimenting with
> Fluid-synth.
> > I did not realize it had this much polyphonic capability.
>
> It has as much polyphony as your computer has CPU power!
>
>
>
> > thanks much,
>
> Nothing much,
> Peter
>
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: address@hidden
> >>[mailto:address@hidden Behalf Of Peter
> >>Hanappe
> >>Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 2:45 PM
> >>To: Mark Knecht
> >>Cc: Chris Cannam; iiwusynth devel; address@hidden
> >>Subject: Re: [Swami-devel] Re: [iiwusynth-devel] RE: Hi - Very quiet
> >>list - my first post
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Hi Mark,
> >>
> >>I'm not quite sur I understand your mail. By default there are
> >>16 channels and maximum 256 voices. This can be changed on the
> >>command line to any arbitrary value (well, to 2^31-1). The number
> >>of soundfonts you can load is unlimited.
> >>
> >>Can you explain a bit more what you had in mind?
> >>
> >>Cheers!
> >>Peter
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Mark Knecht wrote:
> >>
> >>>Peter,
> >>>   Any thoughts about making some future version that could
> >>
> >>function more
> >>
> >>>like a General MIDI device?
> >>>
> >>>1) Accept MIDI data on maybe 4 channels
> >>>2) Load 4 soundfonts. (Or more using this stack approach. Interesting.)
> >>>3) Play up to a specific number of voices, like 16 or 32?
> >>>
> >>>Mark
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>-----Original Message-----
> >>>>From: address@hidden
> >>>>[mailto:address@hidden Behalf Of Peter
> >>>>Hanappe
> >>>>Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 1:47 PM
> >>>>To: Chris Cannam
> >>>>Cc: Mark Knecht; iiwusynth devel; address@hidden
> >>>>Subject: [Swami-devel] Re: [iiwusynth-devel] RE: Hi - Very
> quiet list -
> >>>>my first post
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>Chris Cannam wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>On Tuesday 21 January 2003 09:08, Peter Hanappe wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>FluidSynth can also load several SoundFont files so you can use
> >>>>>>them together.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>I've wondered about that.  <CUT>
> >>>>>iiwusynth only seems to provide one ALSA MIDI device
> regardless of how
> >>>>>many SoundFonts are loaded,
> >>>>>and messing about with different channels
> >>>>>and bank selects hasn't got me anywhere.  I'm probably just being
> >>>>>dense.  Any clues?
> >>>>
> >>>>No matter how many SoundFonts you load, the synthesizer remains just
> >>>>one synthesizer. So that's why there's only one ALSA MIDI 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.
> >>>>Last I tested, that's how Labs/Creative's SoundFont synth works. Maybe
> >>>>not ideal, so we'll add an option to change the default behavior.
> >>>>
> >>>>P
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>Chris
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
>
>