KVR Audio

butter · Post by **butter** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:15 pm

So these have been out for a while and I was wondering if anyone out there has gotten around to downloading and mapping all of these to a format like SF2 or Kontakt. I have seen some of the instruments mapped out and available.

I'm in the process of downloading all of the U of Iowa ones. From previous threads I've noticed that people were having tuning issues and whatnot.

So yeah, anyone know if these have all gotten mapped out?

Otherwise, I would be willing to pay someone to map, and correct the pitch and volumes of everything. I hate to map samples...

duncanparsons · Post by **duncanparsons** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 7:33 pm

over on audioshots, someone has mapped the UOI samples. Here

Note, after downloading, change the extension from .zip to .sfArk.

There's also the piano here

HTH
DSP

butter · Post by **butter** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 7:55 pm

Thanks Duncan. I've downloaded what's out there as far as what's been compiled. I'm actually more interested in the strings at the moment.

It's kinda looking like no one has gone through and done the whole package yet.

manytone · Post by **manytone** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:17 pm

Yep
It is a nice set of samples
It is just a shame about the tuning though.
Alot of work is needed to fix them up to be properly "Usable"
I started it but realized the challenge involved

Maybe one day i'll go there again, but there is a reason no one has done it right yet ... It would be a Hell of alot of work to do them all.

Paul

butter · Post by **butter** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 10:01 pm

I'm in the process of downloading everything while I'm at work and I guess this might be a long term project for me.

What about the UK Philharmonic ones? Anyone know about anyone compiling those? These are really gonna be a pain to download...

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/thesounde ... d_samples/

mspmsp · Post by **mspmsp** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 10:13 am

Downloading the UK Phil samples is not a problem because they're hosted here - http://slib.soundex.co.uk/samples/ which allows you to browse the directories.

The problem with the Philharmonic ones in that the only way you can find out which file relates to a particular pitch/articulation is to use the www interface (that and their in mp3 format).

Jeff Lear recently mentioned that he'd like to start a (software) project to create a tool that could automatically turn a collection of samples into a soundfont by analysing the pitch and volume of samples. see this thread for details http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=105629

I had the idea that you could do some scripting to automatically go through each option in each dropdown on the UK Phil search site and download samples to a sensible filename/directory structure. Anyone fancy giving this a try?

butter · Post by **butter** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 5:33 pm

That would rule if someone came up with that. I haaaate mapping samples. I just wanna play them.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 6:00 pm

The U of Iowa samples are rather mediocre in quality. Some of them have peaks at -40dB or even lower. What a waste of audio bandwidth.
Also, quite some of them are played just lousily. Unpredictable vibratos and the likes.
I once made a useful Flugelhorn out of them though, yet nothing to write home about.

There's been an effort of the EXS users list once, to compile them all into EXS patches, but after all it was clear most of them weren't even halfway worth the effort, especially as a LOT of destructive editing would've been required, such as loop fades in a destructive manner, cutting the sample all up, trimming them properly, the usual blah blah - all that when dealing with source samples that aren't even named properly.

You could probably get the occasional nice instrument out of them, but I'm sure it'll be easier to find an appropriate free soundfont instead.

As far as the UK philharmonic samples go, it's just about the same, only that they're sorted in an even worse manner.

butter · Post by **butter** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 6:09 pm

I went through and listened to most of the cello samples and I would have to agree with you on that. I stopped downloading them last night.

Such a shame too. It would have been a great resource.

I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and get GPO.

Lord Snarebottom · Post by **Lord Snarebottom** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 6:18 pm

I did actually map the piano samples to a NNXT patch. The problem with the UofIowa samples was that there was a number of problems (such as noise spikes) that made a 1 to 1 mapping impossible. That and only 3 velocity levels didn't really make for a bad sample set, but they weren't great either. A considerably amount of editing was required as well.

U of Iowa and UK Philharmonic samples