[FREE] ConvertWithMoss - convert from/to WAV,Bitwig,SFZ,SF2,DecentSampler,MPC/Force,Wave-/Modwave/KMP,NKI,EXS) v17.1

[audiojunkie]

Hi Moss! I have a question: Of the 18 file formats that are supported, which ones are like SFZ—a folder of wav files and a definition file? I prefer this style of format, because the samples are future-proofed, and not locked within an encrypted monolithic format. I’m looking into what format I might want to use in the future if I go hardware or if I buy another sampler. If I’m not mistaken, Decent Sampler is like SFZ. And, SF2 instruments are monolithic. I’m not sure about the rest.

[moss]

Hi Moss! I have a question: Of the 18 file formats that are supported, which ones are like SFZ—a folder of wav files and a definition file? I prefer this style of format, because the samples are future-proofed, and not locked within an encrypted monolithic format. I’m looking into what format I might want to use in the future if I go hardware or if I buy another sampler. If I’m not mistaken, Decent Sampler is like SFZ. And, SF2 instruments are monolithic. I’m not sure about the rest.

Quite a lot: TAL Sampler, TX16w, Akai Keygroups, also Bitwig Multisamples and DecentSampler also have a text file which is simply compressed.

But the question is also how complex it is to write and how expressive it is. In both points SFZ is quite unbeatable.

[audiojunkie]

Hi Moss! I have a question: Of the 18 file formats that are supported, which ones are like SFZ—a folder of wav files and a definition file? I prefer this style of format, because the samples are future-proofed, and not locked within an encrypted monolithic format. I’m looking into what format I might want to use in the future if I go hardware or if I buy another sampler. If I’m not mistaken, Decent Sampler is like SFZ. And, SF2 instruments are monolithic. I’m not sure about the rest.

Quite a lot: TAL Sampler, TX16w, Akai Keygroups, also Bitwig Multisamples and DecentSampler also have a text file which is simply compressed.

But the question is also how complex it is to write and how expressive it is. In both points SFZ is quite unbeatable.

I was considering an Akai MPC one+. I know very little about it so far. In what way is this particular format limited? I would be unable to write detailed SFZ files like those from Karoryfer products.

[audiojunkie]

I’ve been digging, and I found this statement:

———Quote———

Some limitations you may not find easily in Akai's marketing material:
- There are only 4 velocity layers, or 4 round-robins. A "keygroup" can have 4 different samples and you can switch between the 4 samples either by velocity, round-robin cycling, or randomly. You can have more velocity layers per MIDI note by placing many "keygroups" on the same MIDI note, but you can't have more than 4 round-robins for the same velocity. With two keygroups sharing the same MIDI notes you can have 8 velocity layers, or 12 with three.
- Note-off (release) samples will need their own keygroups.
- But all of that will eat up your total number of keygroups which is 128. For an instrument with 8 velocity layers and separate note-off samples, you'll need 2+1 separate keygroups handling each MIDI note, and 128/3 means that you can have at most 42 separately sampled pitches. Not quite enough for e.g. all white keys of a grand piano, but I think it's quite OK. If you reach that limit on an actual hardware MPC, hats off to you. However, if you try to convert a piano sample library from somewhere else, it won't fit, you'll have to cut it down.
- Making sustain loops is painful in Akai's sample editor. Finding, adjusting, pre-listening, it's painful. You'll maybe do it for a few samples, but if you have dozens or hundreds, it becomes evident that you're using the wrong tool.
- Sustain loops cannot be tuned separately from the rest of the sample, so single-cycle or very short loops may be out of tune compared to the beginning of the sample. If you've sampled A=440Hz with 44100 Hz rate and want a single-cycle sustain loop, 100 samples is higher than the beginning of the sample and 101 samples is lower, and you won't be able to fix it with any setting on the MPC. (There are settings for this in the sample file format, but they don't do anything even if you hack the XML)
- There's no "scripting" like in Kontakt, or any kind of switching between articulations or anything like that. (That I know of)
- There's no disk streaming on MPCs. Everything has to be fully loaded in RAM before you can play.
- There's no real legato for solo synth stuff. Even with "legato" on and monophonic, every new note will re-trig your sample AND envelopes. A new note cannot just continue playing with a different pitch.
- I don't know if it's the same on MPCs, but on the Force, saving a project will not save and/or load the WHEEL>LFO modulation setting for keygroup instruments, so whenever you load back your project you MOD WHEEL DOES NOT WORK anymore.

———End Quote ——

This puts the Akai MPC sampler in the same territory as TAL-Drum. If this is the best that Hardware synths have got these days, I’ll be pretty disappointed.

[moss]

I’ve been digging, and I found this statement:

———Quote———

Some limitations you may not find easily in Akai's marketing material:
- There are only 4 velocity layers, or 4 round-robins. A "keygroup" can have 4 different samples and you can switch between the 4 samples either by velocity, round-robin cycling, or randomly. You can have more velocity layers per MIDI note by placing many "keygroups" on the same MIDI note, but you can't have more than 4 round-robins for the same velocity. With two keygroups sharing the same MIDI notes you can have 8 velocity layers, or 12 with three.
...
———End Quote ——

This puts the Akai MPC sampler in the same territory as TAL-Drum. If this is the best that Hardware synths have got these days, I’ll be pretty disappointed.

It's not as bad as it sounds. The latest 3.4 OS got many improvements for keygroups. You can have now up to 8 layers (which is already supported in ConvertWithMoss), disc streaming is there as well and many additional sound parameters like a 2nd filter, more LFOs and a modulation matrix. But I would not choose it as a long term storage format.

[audiojunkie]

Interesting! I wasn’t aware. Here’s what they say:

Another highlight of MPC 3.0 is the introduction of disk streaming. Now, you can stream your sounds directly from the internal hard drive, a feature that has been long awaited. Talking about sounds, each pad can now host up to 8 layers for deeper sound design options.

Further, they extended the modulation options by implementing a more advanced automation engine. As you know, you can draw automation lines for each track, as you are used to using a classic DAW.

Other features include a new one-to-one track workflow, Q-Link and X/Y Pad macro controls, direct-to-pad sampling, and more.

———-

This seems much better! My Problem is that I hate the text editing involved in SFZ and Decent Sampler. What do you think is the best long term storage format? I’ve been using SFZ, but have been dissatisfied with the lack of gui based editing.

[moss]

ConvertWithMoss 12.1.0 is online!

Get it from https://mossgrabers.de

• Fixed: Most of the created files had two dots before the file extension.
• Fixed: Output folder was not checked for existence when only Analyze was executed but it is required now for the log file.
• Fixed: Crash when left/right WAV files should be combined to stereo.
• DecentSampler
  • Fixed: Added workaround for absolute sample paths in dslibrary files.
• Kontakt
  • New: Improved category detection, especially for Instruments in NKM files.
• Kontakt 1/2
  • Fixed: Improved lookup of sample files which are referenced by absolute paths.
  • Fixed: Added support for file paths which include encoded UTF-8 characters in the format of %xxxx.
• Kontakt 5+
  • Fixed: File could not be read if a sound description was set.

Enjoy!

[audiojunkie]

Moss, In your personal opinion, what is the best long term format?

[moss]

Moss, In your personal opinion, what is the best long term format?

I think it is best to keep them in their original format and have a tool like ConvertWithMoss or similar to convert it to other formats when you need it.
Besides that I guess SFZ is your best bet.

[audiojunkie]

That makes sense. There is almost always something lost in translation, and SFZ is most likely to last, since it is an open format and several players are available.

It does seem, so far as I’ve researched to this point, that MPC 3 supported devices are the best available modern “hardware samplers” still being made. The fact that the samples are not encrypted is nice too.

What the world really needs is a visual way to create SFZ instruments.

[trusampler]

Moss puts in work! Thanks

[Calum]

Thanks for this great tool - I'm a new user of ConvertWithMoss and I'm really impressed. I'm currently sampling instruments with Tom Cosm's Resampler (no longer available) and using ConvertWithMoss to convert the resulting WAV samples to SFZ format and ticking the box to "Convert sample to FLAC format". I have found that loading the resulting SFZs into sfizz or sforzando instantly crashes the host (Waveform or MuLab on a Mac or PC). If I replace the FLACs created by ConvertWithMoss with FLACs that are batch converted from the original WAVs using an alternative audio editor (Twisted Wave), then the SFZs load successfully. I can supply FLAC files for comparison it that would help track down the issue.

[moss]

Thanks for this great tool - I'm a new user of ConvertWithMoss and I'm really impressed. I'm currently sampling instruments with Tom Cosm's Resampler (no longer available) and using ConvertWithMoss to convert the resulting WAV samples to SFZ format and ticking the box to "Convert sample to FLAC format". I have found that loading the resulting SFZs into sfizz or sforzando instantly crashes the host (Waveform or MuLab on a Mac or PC). If I replace the FLACs created by ConvertWithMoss with FLACs that are batch converted from the original WAVs using an alternative audio editor (Twisted Wave), then the SFZs load successfully. I can supply FLAC files for comparison it that would help track down the issue.

I can reproduce the issue but the files do play nicely in all my audio players that support FLAC.
I looked around a bit and noticed that sfizz didn't get updated for over a year now. I also checked the library I use for FLAC and the author retired it last October. But it seems he did start a new one at the same time. Will see if I can switch that and if it fixes something but might take a bit.

[Calum]

Thanks for looking into this. No rush for me as I can batch convert the output (incompatible FLAC to compatible FLAC) easily. However, the fact that the ConvertWithMoss FLAC files did not play nicely with sforzando and sfizz initially led me to believe that neither of these SFZ players supported FLAC files, and they do. I also noticed the FLAC files do not work in MuLab. One other thing I noticed (and this may be by design) is that 24 bit WAV/AIFF files passed through "Convert sample to FLAC format" creates 16 bit FLAC files. I wouldn't like to lose this feature (because of the advantage of reduced file size) but it would also be nice to have the option to keep the same bitrate.

[Acid4Life]

Hello!

I'm new here.
First I would like to thank you for sharing a much needed free file format converter to the world, especially for macOS. I really enjoy using it. Unfortunately , the latest ConvertWithMoss 12.1.0 seems to have broken going from a few different Source options to the Logic EXS24 Destination conversion.
I had to revert back to version 11.6.0 for Logic EXS24 conversion. I'm on macOS Sequoia using Logic Pro 11.1.2.