Do most SFZ players support FLAC?

[JeffLearman]

I'm about to publish a version of Salamander Grand with initial silence removed to reduce the latency. Personally, I like to release SFZ sets in FLAC format, because it downloads faster, takes less disk space, and works great with Sforzando.

But do people use SFZ players that don't support FLAC? (I know old sfz.dll does not; I think that's one reason why I switched to Sforzando.)

If a good number of popular players don't support FLAC then I'll post it as wav. There will be both 48/24 and 44/16 formats. Or do most folks who use SFZ format know how to convert? (I like making things easy for newbs, regardless.)

Please advise!

[JeffLearman]

Hmm ... I see redtide used flac format for the standard SplendidGrand, so my guess is that's a good format to use.

If anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your keyboard.

[enroe]

Hmm ... I see redtide used flac format for the standard SplendidGrand, so my guess is that's a good format to use.

If anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your keyboard.

Ooops, yeah. Since I almost only use Sforzando for sfz, I can only
tell something from the Sforzando point of view.

FLAC is a good choice - in my opinion. But there is still room for improvement.
Because there is an OGG version of the Salamander piano by Markus Fiedler
(fiedler-audio.de --> creative commons libraries). And really: You can't hear any
difference to WAV! That's why I find the OGG versions particularly intelligent
and useful: Even extraordinarily exuberant libraries become small and handy.

So: For the absolute optimization of SFZ libraries I would really suggest OGG
as sample format. The only disadvantage: As far as I know no loop points can
be embedded in OGG. That means the loops would really have to be defined
in SFZ itself.

[george]

You can't hear any
difference to WAV!

Yeah, most people may not hear it but doesn't mean there's no difference. OGG is lossy and FLAC lossless. I'd recommend to go FLAC if you're concerned about getting the best quality.

[kinwie]

Ooops, yeah. Since I almost only use Sforzando for sfz, I can only
tell something from the Sforzando point of view.

FLAC is a good choice - in my opinion. But there is still room for improvement.
Because there is an OGG version of the Salamander piano by Markus Fiedler
(fiedler-audio.de --> creative commons libraries). And really: You can't hear any
difference to WAV! That's why I find the OGG versions particularly intelligent
and useful: Even extraordinarily exuberant libraries become small and handy.

So: For the absolute optimization of SFZ libraries I would really suggest OGG
as sample format. The only disadvantage: As far as I know no loop points can
be embedded in OGG. That means the loops would really have to be defined
in SFZ itself.

Actually, ogg can have embedded loop points metadata. It just, the players can't read it, nor sforzando or the old rgc sfz player. OTOH, flac mostly can't have embedded loop points (but i think some files have it) and we are start to pushing flac for having embedded loop points. Hope it can done one day.

For myself, i would avoid ogg though

[pljones]

You can, of course, use an OGG container (with the metadata) to hold FLAC compressed audio... but you'll probably limit support even further...

[enroe]

... For the absolute optimization of SFZ libraries I would really suggest OGG
as sample format ...

Actually, ogg can have embedded loop points metadata. It just, the players can't read it, nor sforzando or the old rgc sfz player.

Thanks for the info. But the problem persists - as players can't read them.

For myself, i would avoid ogg though,

The main disadvantage is: Other players than Sforzando can't read it.
For the sound quality: Just make a blind (or better: a double blind) test -
you will be surprised!

[JeffLearman]

Thanks. When I tried Ogg, Sforzando hiccuped: played each note twice (ditto with mp3.) I bet MP3 is a bad format to use; when I was doing online collaboration for recording projects, we noticed that MP3 adds about 25 msec of silence to a decoded track, which would be really bad for a sampled instrument. For my personal use I'd consider Ogg but for distribution I'd want to use lossless.

[Obsolete462444]

Personally I view Plogue's Sforzando as the de facto standard player for SFZ files, especially since many libraries / SFZ mappings use the Aria opcodes, that are only guaranteed to work in Sforzando / Aria Player. So it's best practice to ensure full compatibility with Sforzando / Aria Player as a baseline IMHO.

Having to support dozens of different players that each implement the SFZ format in a different and often not comprehensive way, is not desirable from a pragmatic standpoint, but that's just my 0,02 € as a user.

[BertKoor]

Make it clear in the description which player is fully supported and be done with it.

[enroe]

Thanks. When I tried Ogg, Sforzando hiccuped: played each note twice (ditto with mp3.)

Mmmh ... this is weird!

I play the "Markus Fiedler Salamander Piano" as ogg nearly every day, and every note is
played exactly as expected. My guess is that the sfz-file is corrupted.

[kinwie]

[quote=enroe post_id=7769446 time=1589733920 user_id=176443]
Mmmh ... this is weird!

I play the "Markus Fiedler Salamander Piano" as ogg nearly every day, and every note is
played exactly as expected. My guess is that the sfz-file is corrupted.
[/quote]

You can play the ogg with my mapping version. Just change the file extension,
#define $EXT flac - to - ogg
And rename the default_path to match yours

[enroe]

Thanks. When I tried Ogg, Sforzando hiccuped: played each note twice (ditto with mp3.)

Mmmh ... this is weird!

I play the "Markus Fiedler Salamander Piano" as ogg nearly every day, and every note is
played exactly as expected. My guess is that your sfz-file is corrupted.

[enroe]

Mmmh ... this is weird!

I play the "Markus Fiedler Salamander Piano" as ogg nearly every day, and every note is
played exactly as expected. My guess is that your sfz-file is corrupted.

You can play the ogg with my mapping version. Just change the file extension,
#define $EXT flac - to - ogg
And rename the default_path to match yours

Yes, thanks!

Your sfz-files are done in a way that you can exchange the file format
easily. Because your sfz's are wonderfully tidy and optimized! Great!