Kingston Drums released

[pljones]

Since everybody can get their hands on sfz 1.9, I'd like to know what would be the advantage of the sfz format instead of sf2. I think it would be pointless and a wast of bandwith downloading both formats.
...
edit
OK, by actually reading the former post I now can answer the question myself. sfz will support the higer samplerates
/edit

Also sfz's sfz format loading currently loads all referenced samples to RAM. sfz's SF2 loading supports Direct-From-Disk (DFD) for the more RAM-challenged. sfz's sfz format DFD support is down for "later", if I remember what René wrote right.

[Kingston]

Sorry if it sounds a bit simple, but I presume you made one good quality kit, then used conversion software to create the different formats.

I would love to make some soundfonts, but I can't find a good intuitive program to do it with - and a couple of threads here haven't helped.

So what was the first format you created?

I started with multitracking the single hits and creating stereo stems from those to be edited in wavelab. I wanted to have separate room samples as well, but couldn't find easy enough software to do this at the time (about year 2000). You know, editing two stereo stems at once for single hit use has its strict demands.

There are two different kits, by the way. Keymaps were first created in EXS, although its keymapping is a bitch to do. Beats me why there's still no drag'n'drop. At the time EXS was the top sampler though (and I'm a logic user).

Halion and Kontakt were imported using their internal options, and it seemed to work flawlessly. I wouldn't trust them with any precise ADSR/filter/lfo program imports.

All DR-008 maps were built from scratch, as it probably has the simplest velocity switch creation on the market.

Soundfonts were converted using CDxtract. There was a minor problem with them and I had to fix it by hand.

I presume SFZ is being ported by hand (editing the text files).

[Bigg John]

You know, editing two stereo stems at once for single hit use has its strict demands.

Without knowing your exact methods, what you could do, in Sound Forge, is edit one file, export the regions list, open the second file and import the list. Of course the 2 filez have to be in perfect sync, the best bet is to record a click or a beep at the start of the tracks. hummm- idon't know if sound forge could have done this in 2000 or not, it seems like it did.

[Muon Software Ltd]

Oh, and make this world a better place and don't support ds404. That @#$% sampler stores the full 90 mb sampleset in every song you use it with.

That's got to be the strangest complaint about DS404 I've ever heard.

I remember installing HALion 2 and the content CDs some time ago, only to get "please locate samples" for every single patch I wanted to listen to. This was from a clean, factory install with default settings mind. Put me off completely, and I never bothered opening the factory patches ever again.

Considering we had to design DS404 so it was easy to do tutorials in the magazine, for example, imagine putting newbies through the hell of installing hundreds of wav files all over their PC from the CD and then risking having the "please locate samples" problem multiplied by 25,000 readers per month? much easier to give them a single song file, primed and ready to go believe me!

Taking it further, imagine if you wanted to collaborate on a tune or take your song files into a studio? with the samples saved into the song it makes it a breeze. With samples scattered across your hard drive you could be there for the first two hours of your session trying to copy over and re-reference 90mb of wave files onto the studio's machine...!

Either way, given the price of a 120gb disk these days what difference does it make if the samples are in the song file or not?

Kind regards
Dave

[Sascha Franck]

Either way, given the price of a 120gb disk these days what difference does it make if the samples are in the song file or not?

I don't know how the DS404 is doing it, but if it really saves it's files in each and every song file I must say that this is totally weird.
I have hundreds of small ideas ans I certainly don't want to be each of those several MBs large.

I have to agree with you on HALion's system of saving and finding samples, it's not good either.
A perfect example of how to do it is FXpansions DR-008 where you have all the options you like, you can save patches only, patches with samples and patches with the samples embedded. And, it's getting even better: No matter how much instances you have opened in a particular song, you just do it ONCE and the DR will simply save the samples of ALL used instances into any directory you like.
The bad thing with it however is that it has no search option at all, so in case you miss a sample, you will have to search manually... often an almost unmanageable task.
Regarding that, N.I. shows how it should be done, you can either tell Battery/Kontakt which directory they should use or just have them search on their own. Perfect.

Also, another word on the DS404: I simply hate proprietary formats using embedded samples, that's why I never started using it, even if I bought the CM issue just because of it.
I also hate soundfonts, but at least all samplers extract them more or less fine - and it's some widely accepted/spread format as well (not that this would be a good thing, but it's the way it is).
Personally I'm in a situation where I have to use all the major samplers (I'm teaching this stuff) and it's just great that I can use exactly the same sets of samples for HALion, Kontakt and the EXS. It would simply drive me nuts if all of those were using their proprietary sample-embedding formats.

[Muon Software Ltd]

Also, another word on the DS404: I simply hate proprietary formats using embedded samples, that's why I never started using it, even if I bought the CM issue just because of it.
I also hate soundfonts, but at least all samplers extract them more or less fine - and it's some widely accepted/spread format as well (not that this would be a good thing, but it's the way it is).

I would actually counterargue that one of the main reasons why soundfonts are so popular is because they are a monolithic format. This makes them easy to store, manage and swap online.

Another good things about proprietory formats also is that they give the ability to add compression. Our Tachyon format uses a highly efficient lossless compression that squeezes the file right down in size (check out the ONE/solo demo with some big ACID wav's!). Compression and encryption are good for saving bandwidth and storage, not to mention protecting intellectual property rights.

Regards
Dave

[Sascha Franck]

I would actually counterargue that one of the main reasons why soundfonts are so popular is because they are a monolithic format. This makes them easy to store, manage and swap online.

Seriously, I can't agree here. They are so popular because not so long ago everybody and his mum was using SB cards.
Further, while being popular, 99% of them are pure shit (maybe apart from the few commercial ones by EMU). There's not a single serious library coming in SF2 format - for good reasons, if you ask me.

Compression and encryption are good for saving bandwidth and storage, not to mention protecting intellectual property rights.

I don't know anything about Tachyon, but WinRar's multimedia compression is just as good as everything else I've seen so far (up to 60% size reduction on 24bit files).
Regarding encryption I can only say that I understand this for "closed" products such as the Spectrasonics things, but when dealing with a sampler, it's just plain useless for the customer.
Personally, I would never even think about using a sampler coming with it's own embedded format, and most people I know of wouldn't do so either.

[Muon Software Ltd]

If soundfonts were hard to download and make use of, I'd hazard a guess that a typical SB user wouldn't bother with them. I'm convinced that the format's monolithic nature didn't hurt the popularity of soundfonts in any way.

Regarding encryption I can only say that I understand this for "closed" products such as the Spectrasonics things, but when dealing with a sampler, it's just plain useless for the customer.

The Muon Tachyon engine is targetted primarily at people developing exactly those closed type of products, and they need encryption and compression so they tell us time and time again.

If a licensee used Tachyon to make a "pure" sampler they could easily design it differently, there's plenty of customisation possible in terms of formats...and yes, it is possible to have a Tachyon-powered plugin with a non-monolithic format, referencing samples on disk or whatever. It's all configurable.

Regards
Dave

[Kingston]

You know, editing two stereo stems at once for single hit use has its strict demands.

Without knowing your exact methods, what you could do, in Sound Forge, is edit one file, export the regions list, open the second file and import the list. Of course the 2 filez have to be in perfect sync, the best bet is to record a click or a beep at the start of the tracks. hummm- idon't know if sound forge could have done this in 2000 or not, it seems like it did.

Yeah, it probably did, and so did wavelab, if memory serves me correctly. I just wasn't up for it.. Importing and exporting anything is tedious at its best.

I didn't know about this songfile saving thing about DS-404 (I didn't actually port these yet). It's gonna be bitch with the 90mb kit...

I'm not a big fan of soundfonts either, I had to downgrade Easyrider before the conversion.

I think I prefer the EXS format this far, as it automatically searches for files if its lost its link. Only problem I've encountered is when you want to have several different sample rate versions of the same wave set. (you pretty much have rename the samples and rebuild it then)

I haven't a lot of experience with kontakt or DR-008 but they both seemed good.

Halion was just plain weird in many respects. I don't think I quite understood the awkward sample program number thing... Dunno if it's trying to maintain legacy midi program number support or something. It felt extremely dated with its midi channel approach as well...

[amoebe]

OK, I apologise for my post. The DS 404 has very good features considering it's magazineware. But when I used it for the NS Kit (127mB) and some other stuff I ended up with a lot of songs that were 300+ mB large, while using only midi and vst's! They took ages to load and since my host was new then it took weeks for me to find out what happened.

[Sascha Franck]

I think I prefer the EXS format this far, as it automatically searches for files if its lost its link.

Well, on the other hand, the EXS is the worst of all if it misses a single sample of an otherwise complete set. In that case the set won't be loaded at all, not even the intact portions of it, and there's NO way to get the patch back without reconstructing it all the way from the scratch. This IMO is incredibly uberlame and I can't understand that a company such as Emagic can get away with that sort of lameness even if each customer and betatester must have been yelling at them because of that.
Other samplers (such as Kontakt/Battery) do at least allow something like "continue loading samples anyways?"

Only problem I've encountered is when you want to have several different sample rate versions of the same wave set. (you pretty much have rename the samples and rebuild it then)

Another EXS lameness - it just doesn't do any CRC checks, it's only looking for filenames. Especially in case of drumsets that's simply inacceptable as you may have like tons of files named "snare01.wav" and so on. In addition to that it will only give three options for multiplied files, if the one you need isn't among them you're lost again.

Regarding sample maintainance the NI products simply do it the best with DR-008 coming second.

[Kingston]

Well, on the other hand, the EXS is the worst of all if it misses a single sample of an otherwise complete set. In that case the set won't be loaded at all, not even the intact portions of it, and there's NO way to get the patch back without reconstructing it all the way from the scratch. This IMO is incredibly uberlame and I can't understand that a company such as Emagic can get away with that sort of lameness even if each customer and betatester must have been yelling at them because of that.
Other samplers (such as Kontakt/Battery) do at least allow something like "continue loading samples anyways?"

Whew!! Lucky me I've never encountered this. That's bad. Evil kind of bad.

Then again, so was the ditching of windows development.

And the fall of BeOS back in the day...

[Jeremy_NSL]

Hey Kingston, the demos sound great! Looking forward to the kits very much Are they still close to release?

[Amberience]

I cannot wait. I love acoustic drumkit soundfonts - the NSKIT is amazing... I really really REALLY want these!!

[Kingston]

floyd,

yeah, they're very close to release indeed. Everything on my side is done, and I'm just waiting for my very generous webmaster to finish off the site and put it all online.

This won't take long. Promise.