[fluid-dev] complexity of soundfont synthesis engine

[jimmy]

> On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:20:38 -0700 (PDT) Michael Geis <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> I posted a question on using fluidsynth to extract .sf2
> sounds to .wav files a few weeks ago. The answers I received
> indicated I had to get a better grasp of the subject matter
> and as a consequence I had to think over what I am doing.
> 
> Sorry if this post is perhaps only marginally related to
> fluidsynth. I am trying to develop a better grasp on
> soundfonts and fluidsynth may or may not be what I will need
> to use in my project (which I currently have a hard time
> telling because of my limited understanding of the subject
> matter).
> 

If you are on Linux, you may want to try swami (soundfont editor).

For a soundfont with lots of samples, it could be a bit overwhelming to try to 
figure out.  However, I found that I can open a soundfont with large number of 
samples.  Create a new (empty) soundfont within the same Swami session, copy 
from the existing soundfont, paste it to the new soundfont.  It will copy all 
the parameters and internal links into the new soundfont.  From there, you can 
export the sound samples for each instrument that is of interest to you.  This 
approach helped me quite a bit.

I suppose other soundfont editors should have similar functionality.  There 
might be other soundfont <-> xml converter/extractor out there.  I tried a 
soundfont to XML extractor (written in Python) sometime ago, it was very 
primitive and not complete.

Jimmy