.MuSynth Specification

[govert]

I was thinking of writing a sfz -> MySynth converter.

the .sfz format is pretty well defined and human readable, but the .MySynth format does not seem to be human readable, and I have not seen any spec.

Would it be in the interest of MUTOOLS that such a converter was developed?
The main reason I would like to make a converter is to use it as a way to be able to use sf2 files with mu lab:

1. Convert sf2 to sfz
2. Convert sfz to mysynth multisample.

Or maybe mu-lab 4 will support .sfz/.sf2 files

[MuTools]

Hi Govert,

The MuSynth file format indeed is undocumented and it will remain like that on short term.

I've already been evaluating doing all files as XML but this has the disadvantages that the files will be (much?) bigger and (much?) slower to load, so that's why i did not (yet?) go further on this road, eventhough i think open file formats are a good thing.

Supporting SF2, SFZ and REX is on the wishlist, though i can't put a timing on it yet.

[MuTools]

Supporting SF2, SFZ and REX is on the wishlist, though i can't put a timing on it yet.

Question: Which of these 3 is most important: SF2, SFZ or REX?

[Nielzie]

Supporting SF2, SFZ and REX is on the wishlist, though i can't put a timing on it yet.

Question: Which of these 3 is most important: SF2, SFZ or REX?

My vote would go to SFZ

[robenestobenz]

Supporting SF2, SFZ and REX is on the wishlist, though i can't put a timing on it yet.

Question: Which of these 3 is most important: SF2, SFZ or REX?

My vote is for REX. There's loadsa free plugins that will load SF2/SFZ. REX offers audio functionality within a host that can't be fully covered by plugins, free or otherwise.

It also makes things a lot easier for audio loop users, which can't be too well served by MuLab at the moment (due to the lack of rex or pitchshifting, limiting loops to their default tempos).

[pljones]

I know nothing about REX, never used it or had need to. I guess there's material out there that uses it though.

SF2 definitely gives you a lot of existing material. But it seems it's not easy to implement -- there's only one VST implementation that really gets it right - sfz (and sfz+, which is the same implementation with a nice GUI; BS-16 is very close, too, and as close as the Mac gets as sfz/sfz+ is PC only).

SFZ format gives you a lot of flexibility -- you've a basic spec but nothing forces you to implement it all at once or stops you adding your own extensions. (None of the Cakewalk implementations is identical, even.)

If it were me, I'd do SFZ. (But then, I'm extremely biased on this...)

[robenestobenz]

I know nothing about REX, never used it or had need to. I guess there's material out there that uses it though.

SF2 definitely gives you a lot of existing material. But it seems it's not easy to implement -- there's only one VST implementation that really gets it right - sfz (and sfz+, which is the same implementation with a nice GUI; BS-16 is very close, too, and as close as the Mac gets as sfz/sfz+ is PC only).

SFZ format gives you a lot of flexibility -- you've a basic spec but nothing forces you to implement it all at once or stops you adding your own extensions. (None of the Cakewalk implementations is identical, even.)

If it were me, I'd do SFZ. (But then, I'm extremely biased on this...)

I've never used .rex either, tbh! But it's pretty much the standard for loops as far as I know. It's not a sample format in the way that .sfz/.sf2 is though.

It's similar to a wav, but it has extra timing info and, most importantly, slice regions. These then enable easy timestretching of loops by simply increasing/decreasing the gaps between the slice regions.

[Nielzie]

REX is the native file format of ReCycle. A REX file contains the original audio of the loop, the spces you have appped in ReCycle, and any effects or processing you have added in ReCycle. Saving an audio file as a REX file also reduces the size of the file significally. This is achieved by applying a "nonlossy" compression algorithm to the file when saved, meaning that it does not compromise the audio quality in any way.