What do you recommend for a simple, easy software sample player, triggered by midi cc or pgm changes?

[stringsnsax]

I just want to play short wav or mp3 clips I create ahead of time in my DAW... some as short as a half second, others 30 secs or so. This is for gigging... looking for something really easy, light on the cpu load. Something where, for a song, I can drag a few files into, and have a midi command to trigger each file. And can save that set of files as a song, and call up the next song with another midi command.

Been using TX16wx for years primarily as an sf2 and sample player, but I just loaded the new version, and it's far too complex for what I need to do (still looking for good tutorials on this new version). In fact, I still haven't figured out how to trigger with midi cc. THANKS!

[whyterabbyt]

why midi cc instead of midi notes? cc arent meant to be triggers at all.

[imrae]

I used to do this in a very hack-y way for live shows with a netbook running Linux. I used mididings to set up filter rules for messages, and then in response to the right Program Change it would make a shell call to aplay to play the audio track and/or pmidi to play the midi track. One Program Change was reserved to kill all pmidi; kill all aplay so there was a way to abort/reset!

Main downside of this is that there was nothing synchronising the audio and midi tracks; was fine for atmospherics and speech but wouldn't be tight enough for a rhythmic backing track. If I do it again I'm considering LinuxSampler for the audio part, to be triggered by messages in the pmidi file player. It's a Gigasampler-like system that can do disk streaming so long backing track samples should work. I wonder if the Raspberry Pi 3 might be powerful enough for this?

[stringsnsax]

why midi cc instead of midi notes? cc arent meant to be triggers at all.

I'm using an FCB 1010, which puts out cc's or pgm changes... no notes. BTW cc's can be used as triggers for a lot of parameters... DAWS,VST hosts like Cantabile or S-Gear, which I use, and numerous VSTi's and plugins. Been gigging with SGear for 3 years and my amp changes, preset advancing, efx on/off, etc are all controlled by cc's with my 1010. Works great!

[whyterabbyt]

why midi cc instead of midi notes? cc arent meant to be triggers at all.

I'm using an FCB 1010, which puts out cc's or pgm changes... no notes. BTW cc's can be used as triggers for a lot of parameters... DAWS,VST hosts like Cantabile or S-Gear, which I use, and numerous VSTi's and plugins. Been gigging with SGear for 3 years and my amp changes, preset advancing, efx on/off, etc are all controlled by cc's with my 1010. Works great!

Kinda thinking the easier solution might be a plugin to convert the CC to midi notes, and then you could use just about any sampler.

pizmidi set includes such things

viewtopic.php?f=148&t=300566

(download site now https://code.google.com/archive/p/pizmidi/)

[stringsnsax]

Thanks. I think I have it figured out, Bome's Classic Midi Translator (free) should convert cc or pgm changes to notes... gonna try it tomorrow.
Still looking for a good, easy sample player that's light on cpu load, in 64 bit. TX16wx is pretty complex but I finally got it working for my applicaiton. I also tried SFZ player which I've had for years, very simple and intuitive, but the latest version I loaded recently isn't loading more than one sample at a time, even using different midi channels. It always did before, so that needs some work if I go that route. I'm thinking I jsut need to work with TX16wx more... wish there was a good tutorial for the latest version

Thanks for the replies!

[shidostrife]

For the sampler, you can try grace sampler.

https://www.onesmallclue.com/plugin/grace/

[RexXx]

Sitala as easy sample player is worth a look.

Sitala (drum / audio sample player)
Supports WAV, AIFF, MP3, WMA, FLAC...
Standalone, VST, AU, 32/64bit (win, mac, linux)
Free

With Sitala you can trigger 16 samples via midi notes and save them as a kit ("song").

You could use up to 15 pads/slots for your samples and use 1 pad to stop playback.
To stop playback - load a short, silent wav to a pad/slot and use right click option "kill".

If you save your kit ("song") preset in Sitala`s factory folder, you have instant access to it in the dropdown list. Samples also stored inside the kit preset.

Atm., I see no way to change kits ("songs") via MIDI (e.g. progam change), but the developers are active here at KVR and open for suggestions.

Home:
https://decomposer.de/sitala.html

KVR thread:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=504573

[stringsnsax]

Thanks for all the replies. Yeah, I'm going to try grace, I'd heard it's decent. But haven't heard about Sitala, sounds interesting.

BTW I discovered the FCB 1010 does in fact put out midi note info, it's sort of buried down in the corner of the Editor. I also figured out that I don't need to send midi pgm changes for different songs, at least not using TX16... When I save a song in Cantable (my vst host) it saves the state of all plugins with that song. So that's solved. So it works, but I have to hold the FCB switch while the sample is playing... not a great scenario for gigging, when playing longer wavs of 30 secs or so (i.e. synth pad). So, in case someone else has the same issue, here was a great solution:
I did get Bome's midi translator to spit out the note info, but before I went completely down that path I wanted to dig deeper... for gigging the less software the better. I saw something in a forum somewhere, talking about cc64 being the sustain, and a light bulb went off. I'd already played with the sustain and release in the TX16 and knew that could do it, but I still needed a way to trigger it. The FCB has 2 CC slots, and if you set the same CC in both (i.e. 64 for Sustain), one with a value of 127 and the other at 0, each press of the switch it sends the next CC. So it makes it a toggle function. I did that and it works great. Don't know why I didn't think of that before... sometimes you lose the forest for the trees. I've also spent even more time with TX16 and have decided to use it... the whole "Performance vs. Program Slots vs. Banks" thing is not very intuitive but once you figure out it's quirks it's pretty good. Again, thanks!