PHENOME VSTi | BEST FREE SF2 PLAYER | v1.70 released!

[Jafo]

Neat! It lets me do a lot of cool things in a single, friendly, powerful, inexpensive plug. Well done! This will no doubt become a major player.

Now for the bad things. First, I couldn't get sample layering to work, which was a bummer. Second, it didn't seem terribly responsive to the velocity layers within each soundfont, which is an absolute necessity (but since my testing was minor, I may have missed it, and I'm looking forward to admitting I'm wrong). Still, it's pretty sweet already, and I think it'll just get better.

This could also be an order of magnitude more useful if you can make it handle more than soundfonts. Most of us have more or less moved on to sfz (or other advanced formats), which allows for 24- and 32-bit samples, random triggers, round-robin alternation, release triggers, and a few other nifty things.

[glokraw]

I used it in Reaper 3.4 XP sp1, with the 2 worst miscreant vsts
I have, and they all got along fine. This is a great surprise,
and well presented with a nice gui and access to features. Thanks!
I should dig out that giant Crisis GM gigabyte soundfont for a torture test

[sonicfire]

Hi,
sorry but doesn't work here.

Reaper crashes on scanning the plugin and minihost doesn't load it neither. Both give following error message:

Executable 'c:\test\Reaper 3.68\reaper.exe' had thet following unrecoverable error:
Missing Ordinal c:\test\Reaper 3.68\Plugins\FX\VST\Phenome\Phenome.dll->KERNEL32.dll:1


BTW:
It is on Win XP SP1 (32bit).
On Win XP SP2 (32bit) it loads OK.


Also, it's a shame it doesn't fulfil the announced "Total Recall" feature , because not only it does not save samples/banks within host project, but it even does not complain if you try to load project and SF2 banks are not available on their original locations (sadly, these are not known then to user then).

akademie

Thanks for testing! Much appreciated.
Good that you let me know, i have to find a solution for this.
The "Total Recall" should work now - please download it again!

[sonicfire]

Would be cool if it were 16-part (so you can load MIDI files in it), and if it had 16 stereo outputs (for detailed external effect processing per part). Also polyphony up to 128 per part. Possible to do in an update in due time?

With MIDI files you mean loading them into your Sequencer and let Phenome play them back using custom parts? Should be possible. I could make a Phenome XL or something Noted.

Not sure about a polyphony that high, though. But i will investigate!

wow wow wow thank you man amazing!
*EDIT*its working perfect in cubase 5 and fl studio i have an i7 920 its useing between 4-5%of my cpu with one patch just thought i would let you no anyway nice job!

Happy to hear this!

sonicfire, you've been blessed with a great mind which could bring forth lots of interesting creations! Thank you very much for your freeware! In another world (or another epoch), you'd be a very successful businessman. Wink

I'd really like to buy Randomax from you, but Plugindex only offers PayPal as payment method, and I can't proceed in that matter. Just to let you know that I would like to support you financially somehow.

Thanks again!

You're welcome! Thanks

[sonicfire]

Neat! It lets me do a lot of cool things in a single, friendly, powerful, inexpensive plug. Well done! This will no doubt become a major player.

Now for the bad things. First, I couldn't get sample layering to work, which was a bummer. Second, it didn't seem terribly responsive to the velocity layers within each soundfont, which is an absolute necessity (but since my testing was minor, I may have missed it, and I'm looking forward to admitting I'm wrong). Still, it's pretty sweet already, and I think it'll just get better.

This could also be an order of magnitude more useful if you can make it handle more than soundfonts. Most of us have more or less moved on to sfz (or other advanced formats), which allows for 24- and 32-bit samples, random triggers, round-robin alternation, release triggers, and a few other nifty things.

You mean layering multiple Parts to one MIDI Channel? If yes, you can click + hold mouse + move it up down (like a slider) on any Channel to choose a different one (1-16) for each Layer. Hope that helps

Oh, ok. I will try that velocity thing and have a look what the problem could be there. Thanks for letting me know!

I know, SFZ is excellent. If there were SFZ+ playback modules i would start in a minute doing a SFZ player

[THK]

thx for this. beautiful and functional GUI design.

some problems i had:

does the panning work yet ... and if yes, how ???
moving the slider seems to have no effect here.

using other preset slots except the first one only produces silence
... even after adjusting the parameters.

[crisis-at-music]

I just downloaded and played with your new plugin. First I have to say: great work!
The GUI looks great and is very intuitive - at least after 5min testing. I also tried loading huge soundfonts (Crisis GM, 1.0GB in size): the loading takes some time (which is normal), but Phenome was even able to load this huge SF2 without crashing my host Reaper (like the recently released DSK SF2 did).

One suggestion: the patch select drop-down menu is OK, but maybe have a look how DSK SF2 does it. The popup which shows all patches in a small tab would make it even more usable.

[sonicfire]

thx for this. beautiful and functional GUI design.

some problems i had:

does the panning work yet ... and if yes, how ???
moving the slider seems to have no effect here.

using other preset slots except the first one only produces silence
... even after adjusting the parameters.

Yes, you just move the pan sliders! Mhh, that's weird it should work fine!

Mhh, you have to make sure a bank and a preset is selected! Then you should be able to hear everything I will have a look. If you dont mind send me a copy of the SF2 or a link where to download it? (If it is freeware, of course).

[sonicfire]

I just downloaded and played with your new plugin. First I have to say: great work!
The GUI looks great and is very intuitive - at least after 5min testing. I also tried loading huge soundfonts (Crisis GM, 1.0GB in size): the loading takes some time (which is normal), but Phenome was even able to load this huge SF2 without crashing my host Reaper (like the recently released DSK SF2 did).

One suggestion: the patch select drop-down menu is OK, but maybe have a look how DSK SF2 does it. The popup which shows all patches in a small tab would make it even more usable.

Thank you! Glad to hear it worked!
This is currently "in development" - expect it today/this evening

[EvilDragon]

Would be cool if it were 16-part (so you can load MIDI files in it), and if it had 16 stereo outputs (for detailed external effect processing per part). Also polyphony up to 128 per part. Possible to do in an update in due time?

With MIDI files you mean loading them into your Sequencer and let Phenome play them back using custom parts? Should be possible. I could make a Phenome XL or something Noted.

Not sure about a polyphony that high, though. But i will investigate!

Thanks! And what do you say about this being a 32-out plugin? So each of the 16 loaded soundfonts could have its own stereo output?


Looking forward to Phenome XL to replace SFZ.

[sonicfire]

Thanks! And what do you say about this being a 32-out plugin? So each of the 16 loaded soundfonts could have its own stereo output?


Looking forward to Phenome XL to replace SFZ.

Ooph! Not sure about that, could take a WHILE to load and i guess then there would be a heavy CPU overhead... what about 8 Stereo Outputs for a start? So you could for now use two instances of Phenome and have 16 Parts each with its own Output? But i will give it a try anyway soon.

Remember, it doesn't load SFZ patches

[audington]

Thank you very much for this! There seems to have been a few Soundfont players released recently, and this is by far the best! Thanks!

[THK]

thx for this. beautiful and functional GUI design.

some problems i had:

does the panning work yet ... and if yes, how ???
moving the slider seems to have no effect here.

using other preset slots except the first one only produces silence
... even after adjusting the parameters.

Yes, you just move the pan sliders! Mhh, that's weird it should work fine!

Mhh, you have to make sure a bank and a preset is selected! Then you should be able to hear everything I will have a look. If you dont mind send me a copy of the SF2 or a link where to download it? (If it is freeware, of course).

Hm ...

It happens with any soundfont. Preset slot 1 (called Phenome - i renamed it to TestPattern here) is working fine - except of the panning.



On any other patch i do hear nothing - doesn't matter which soundfont i load or how i am tweaking the parameters. All outputs are connected, i tried all midi channels ... what am i doing wrong ?!?

[EvilDragon]

Thanks! And what do you say about this being a 32-out plugin? So each of the 16 loaded soundfonts could have its own stereo output?


Looking forward to Phenome XL to replace SFZ.

Ooph! Not sure about that, could take a WHILE to load and i guess then there would be a heavy CPU overhead...

With today's CPUs? Come on!

what about 8 Stereo Outputs for a start? So you could for now use two instances of Phenome and have 16 Parts each with its own Output? But i will give it a try anyway soon.

That would be great for this version which has 8 parts!

Remember, it doesn't load SFZ patches

Neither does sfz (it's only a SF2 player! And yeah, it has up to 256 polyphony...)

[crisis-at-music]

Neither does sfz (it's only a SF2 player! And yeah, it has up to 256 polyphony...)

SFZ does also load .sfz files. It is SFZ+ that can only load SF2 files. (So it should be renamed to SFZ- by the way...)