Anyone using Bismark bs-16?

Sampler and Sampling discussion (techniques, tips and tricks, etc.)
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Hi, i have been trying several vst soundfont players outside and found the demo of bismark very good, with good performance.
Any one have used it and have any advise to give?

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I used it (bought a copy!) before René released sfz and sfz+. They're better :D

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pljones wrote:I used it (bought a copy!) before René released sfz and sfz+. They're better :D
In what way? Are they more accurate playing soundfonts or your opinion is related to the open sfz format?
I have found that in my old machine the bismark thing has better performance in realtime than the sfz but i know not all is performance when choosing a sampler.

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I don't have sfz+, but I've been using BS16 as a basic GM sound source every day for about 2 years, and I haven't had a single problem.

Its also very cpu light.

If quality is an issue, I recommend you try them both and judge for yourself..

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platinumears wrote:If quality is an issue, I recommend you try them both and judge for yourself..
I will.
Looking at specifications, maybe sfz is more impressive in the way that it have 256&128 of bs-16, and that supports one soundfont per channels instead of only 8 files, bs-16. A thing i like about the bismark one is that it have extensive support, appear to be, to filters and NRPN of the sblive, im not sure about the sfz+ one.

Another question, for bs-16 or sfz+ owners:
Can you have two instances of it running without problem?

Thanks!

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I bought bs-16 and I have the free sfz. I also have an SBLive to compare them to. sfz has a little more accurate envelope generator timing at very short times, so soundfonts that have a lot of pitch or filter sweep in first few milliseconds of the attck or release phase sound more accurate on sfz, but sfz uses almost 3X the CPU on my Athlon system, especially when I set the sound card latency as low as it will go for live tracking. Usually, I use my SBLive for tracking (no latency), then render through either. If you don't have an SBLive, try the free sfz, and if the CPU requirements are too great, get bs-16. You can load multiple soundfonts on different MIDI channels in both bs-16 and sfz+, and I have had multiple instances of bs-16 running on my system.

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marce wrote:In what way? Are they more accurate playing soundfonts or your opinion is related to the open sfz format?
I have found that in my old machine the bismark thing has better performance in realtime than the sfz but i know not all is performance when choosing a sampler.
If performance is at all important, I'd have to say stick with BS-16. René's design goal with sfz+ seems to have been perfection rather than efficiency.

So sfz+ is "better" in terms of sound quality... I had quite a job getting René to add GM mode (ch10 is drums) to sfz+, though (and it's still not exactly how one might expect: you must send a patch change to get drums).

Yes, being able to faff around with mappings in sfz is nice (but it's not a GM player).

I liked BS-16 a lot, though. I'm not going to knock it.

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Well, thanks your answers. Is good to see that i have not only an option and that this two ones can compete and are live projects (bs-1 is included in Tracktion 2 and sfz, probably with cake, isnt?)
Well, i will try them and see.

If any other advise, i will apreciate it also.

See you!

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marce wrote:Well, thanks your answers. Is good to see that i have not only an option and that this two ones can compete and are live projects (bs-1 is included in Tracktion 2 and sfz, probably with cake, isnt?)
Well, i will try them and see.

If any other advise, i will apreciate it also.

See you!
I forgot to ask:
Are this sampleplayers supporting soundfont 2.0 or 2.1?
Thanks!

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