Re: [fluid-dev] fluidsynth bugs

[Ebrahim Mayat]

On Sep 23, 2010, at 10:33 AM, Victor Lazzarini wrote:

> Hi everyone
>
> there seems to be a couple of bugs with fluidsynth (1.1.1, command- 
> line program):
>
> 1. It resets all channes to prg 1, so when you play a midifile, all  
> we get is piano from GM soundfonts. I have asked about this here,  
> but no one responded. With a call to
>
>  fluid_synth_sfload(synth, p->soundfont, 0);

Victor

The behavior that you describe depends on your midi file. If there are  
no PCs in your midi file you will get the default piano in each channel.

>  it seems this behaviour is prevented. But there does not seem to be  
> a setting to prevent reset-presets in the fluidsynth program.

Yes, you can put in program changes by inputting a file such as the  
one outlined below

select 0 1 000 000
select 1 1 000 002
select 2 1 000 005
select 3 1 012 000
select 4 1 000 006
select 5 1 000 017

If you run "fluidsynth -f file_above /path/to/GM_soundfont" you can,  
for example, obtain channel settings like:

> channels
chan 0, Stereo Grand
chan 1, Electric Grand
chan 2, FM Electric Piano
chan 3, Bell Piano
chan 4, Harpsichord
chan 5, Percussive Organ


> 2. The 'coreaudio' driver sounds just horrible (OSX 10.5), whereas  
> 'portaudio' or 'jack' are correct. It sounds as if there is a sample  
> format issue,
> because of the kind of distortion I am getting.

This also depends on the kind of hardware you are using (CPU(s), RAM),  
the density of MIDI events that are being received by fluidsynth. If  
you are using fluidsynth for live MIDI triggering, the sound quality  
should be of a good quality. However, if you are rendering a MIDI file  
with many channels and a high density of MIDI events you could be  
saturating your computer's CPU particularly if it is of a low clock  
rate. Sound distortion results in such a case.

Try different MIDI files (widely available online) of your favorite  
hit tunes to test the limits of your hardware. As they say: YMMV.

Hope this clears things up for you.
E