On 10/31/2012 05:18 AM, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
What do you think about CoolSoft's VirtualMIDISynth?
The page mentions your GeneralUser soundfont, so I assume
you already know about this program.
Yes, I am familiar with VirtualMIDISynth. It's not a VST plugin, so
I didn't really consider it as a solution, especially since I still
have an Audigy sound card which already has a SoundFont synth
onboard (and a very good one at that). Here are the disadvantages to
the approach of using the Audigy
Synth/VirtualMIDISynth/FluidSynth/Qsynth as standalone apps:
- All standalone synth output must eventually be recorded onto
an audio track to be processed in any way, which eats up a lot
more hard disk space than necessary. Further changes to the
synth's notes require a re-record of the audio.
- Audio from the synths must be recordable by the audio
software. Depending on audio device setup, this is not always
easy to do, and not always possible to do without losing sound
quality. Having been spoiled by Jack on Linux, I can't believe
how weak Windows 7's audio routing capabilities are in
comparison. If I try to record Qsynth's output, for example, I
have to mute all other audio sources or those will get recorded
as well.
- One has to remember which SoundFonts were used with which
songs and manually load them into the synth for each different
song that is worked on.
This is the method I must use currently if I want to incorporate
SoundFonts into my workflow. I end up using the Audigy synth
because it is the easiest to record from and it's accurate. I
can't count on having an Audigy synth available forever, though.
Qsynth gets confused by my virtual MIDI cable software and won't
let me select the right MIDI input, so I haven't been able to use
that.
-~Chris
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