What I don't know about soundfonts

[Leonardus]

Start out using sfz, which is simple, free, and great.

Thanks, Learjeff- I did just that.

Unfortunately, I'm unable to use SFZ. The sound output is grossly distorted. I suspect it has something to do with the VST wrapper in Sonar 5. As, another vendor's B4 demo VST has likewise distorted output.
Sonar 5's bundled "lite" Livesynth app-w/1 meg sample load-limit played back Sonic Implants baby demo fonts perfectly via Sonar 5's DXi. And after auditioning their Fender Rhodes, I'm especially looking forward to having fun with yours.

I'm looking forward to giving all the soundfonts referenced here a serious go-round. With any luck, I'll be up and running soon. Thanks, Leonard

[SampleSmith]

http://www.samplesmith.com/pub/C3_test.SF2

Sines

This is C3 mapped to key 60 Full scale (23 bits actually).
There's also C3 mapped to key 72 bottom 8 bits.

I hope that helps. With the other one, I was having a bit of fun with Marce, who lives so close to where my favourite music comes from.

If they're still too long let me know. I have to leave for a gig in a couple of hours but I could re-post in the morning.

cheers,
k

[learjeff]

Leonardus,

To hear how a VSTi should sound (or just have fun playing them), try the free "vsthost" (google to find it). It's just a trivial host program intended for debugging VSTi programs, but I use it for live playing (mostly because I'm cheap, and largely because it does the job!)

[learjeff]

Got the files, Keith. Thanks!

[SampleSmith]

Learjeff if the mapping bothers you (I forgot to change the root key on the 8 bit sample.)
I've fixed that -same link.
I look forward to your conclusions...
k

[learjeff]

OK, thanks. No, the mapping shouldn't matter since I doubt that's changed.

Cheers
Jeff

[learjeff]

PS: chicken soup!

[learjeff]

OK, just as I suspected: there's a new chunk (sm24) in the sf file, and it's half as long as the normal wave data chunk (meaning that most likely it carries the extra 8 bits per sample).

Well-written programs should ignore unknown chunks (though the spec doesn't require that). So, well-designed players should play them and ignore the extra 8 bits per sample (which are stored in a different place).

So, thanks for posting the file!

[Leonardus]

what other sample formats exist besides Soundfont and what are their strengths?

Remline- Check out this link.http://www.purgatorycreek.com/. Check out their Piano shootout. I've been doing a lot of homework planning for a DAW PC purchase next spring. I've been completely out of world of digital recording the past few years, so I've been boning up. Here is brief summary of what I have learned in the past two months. Hope this helps or isn't an insulting over-simplification. I'm a newbie too.

The question I began with was this: Which sound module (virtual, hardware, or otherwise), offers the most sound quality per dollar?
Everything pointed to software samplers. They really are the champs.

Gigastudio, Kontakt and Battery are 3 high-profile players. They cost about $400. But $400 is nowhere near what it costs to actually use them.
First, you'll need serious PC horsepower to run them THEN you have to buy their high end sample DVDs.

What kind of PC horsepower will you need to run one of these software based sampler?

I've done the bulk of my study here on PC hardware. My purely non-techincal mind came to this conclusion:
PC's are very much in their infancy. You are fortunate if things appear to work seemlessly in your PC because it really isn't. It can't possibly be the way written instructions are compartmentalized and strung about to interact with the many other utterly indifferent insular-centric instruction sets.

Soundfonts are the clear value leader in the software sampler arena. But, they do not measure with the big boys at the highest levels.
Still, it would be shortsighted to dismiss them. There still is the question: How good are soundfonts at their best? They very well may be hugely impressive! I don't know and I won't know until I experience them for myself.

So, for now, I'd like to get my feet wet and have some fun with them.

Cheers, Leonard

[learjeff]

BTW, you can get cheap copies of the previous versions of products like GigaStudio on ebay. Finding deals on the sounds is a bigger challenge.

[bugs]

Leonardus, ... and there's an embarassing amount there for me to learn. I hope it's helpful to you too.

Keith

There is an embarassing amount to learn about all this stuff for everyone--it's what makes it so damned interesting! It's the first the motherload of music applicable knowledge to come along in centuries. What a time to live!

[marce]

Marce, see if this crashes it. You probably know the tune, and yeah, we don't play that stuff right up here...
It's about 4.5 meg -I hope that's not to big.
http://www.samplesmith.com/pub/Agua24bitSF_test.zip

Oh yeah, nothing's mapped so it's key 60, right?

k

Thanks Keith! Im traveling now, when i come back home i will test it.

Hi Jeff!

[SampleSmith]

Thanks, Marce and Jeff. It was an interesting and productive exercise, and certainly revealed to me just who I was dealing with, and the kind of expertise available here - a great pleasure and education.

Admitting that Leonardus' thread has been partially hijacked, albeit for a useful and productive purpose, perhaps we can steer things back towards his original question, which was very interesting to me.

Is the 24 bit soundfont going to make much difference to SoundFont's place in the sampling hierarchy?
I'm a little surprised that Creative hasn't made more noise about this.

Keith

[learjeff]

Well, it removes a criticism that some think is significant (not me, as I said above). I don't think it will change the habit of commercial sound designers, who will understandably target the most lucrative markets when choosing what formats to directly support.

Hopefully, though, products like Extreme Sample Converter and CDExtract (both of which I've used and work great), and others that I know less about, will upgrade to support 24-bit soundfonts, so if we want, we can purchase excellent sounds and convert them to sf format.

No doubt .sf2 and .sfz will continue to be the format of choice for folks distributing free formats, again for the same reason: that's what folks want.

Thanks again for posting the 24-bit soundfont! However, I very much doubt I'll be rebuilding my Rhodes soundfont in 24 bits. (Note: I did make the original recordings in 24 bit and only dithered to 16 bit after all processing and normalization.)

There was someone here, Sasha Frank IIRC, who dislikes normalized samples (with good reasons, though I disagree with the generalization). For un-normalized soundfonts, 24 bits is much more important and a very good thing. It eliminates my main argument against un-normalized samples.

[Leonardus]

Admitting that Leonardus' thread has been partially hijacked, albeit..
Keith

This message is for everyone.

By all means, run with this thread. I appreciate what is taking place.

I edited my last post to step back and fit in better with what's taking place.
It's a pleasure to meet you all. You guys are rolling. So, run with it! Leonard