Hi, list,
I asked at some point for an alternative synth to the Microsoft one, which
is not very good. Well, it turns out that it's possible to use a program
called SynthFont. SynthFont is nagware, you can use it for free and it gives
you a little warning on startup, or you can register it. Basically it is a
software SoundFont synthesizer. It can be used in several ways for our
purposes, I will indicate a few:
1, you can use it to convert your midis to wav once your sequencing is done,
and it has pretty good quality for this purpose.
2, you can activate midi input on the program, and using MidiYoke send midi
events to it for them to be synthesized in realtime. This works pretty well,
so long as you set the buffers right. Too much buffering and the lag becomes
too big, too little and the synthesis becomes choppy. On the options
dialogue box there is a button to test the synthesis with a tone that should
sound smooth, if not you need more buffering.
3, you can use this synth as a VST instrument, as it has a VST plug-in
version. I've tried it out with VSTHost and MidiYoke and it works. That said
it seems a bit useless to introduce more layers of indirection, and the
non-vst program has support for chaining VST effects if that is what one
needs.
Some cons of this synth is that as far as I've been able to determine it
does not support chorus and reverb, although it's possible to introduce
those effects through VST. Also it is not very accessible, it requires a bit
of tinkering about and can seem dawnting at first (at least to me). That
said I can use it fine now. There's just a problem I haven't been able to
solve and which I consider rather important, and it has to do with midi
banks. Somehow, when sending midi in realtime, SynthFont always plays the
instruments on bank zero, no matter what one tells it through controller 0
etc. However, when converting to wav, it does honour the bank selections.
Odd. I'll see if I can get some information on this, maybe file a bug.
Anyway, it's pretty good otherwise, it's let me make some nice-sounding
music with some reasonable quality instruments. I'm at present using a free
font called GeneralUser GS 1.4.sf2. In my view it's a pretty good font, at
least it has some good instruments. I also use patches from here and there,
and other instruments from other fonts, as one can choose per track what
audio source to use, and for instance the orchestral harp on GeneralUser
sounds a bit too faint on the low octaves.
Anyway, I hope this is of some interest to the list. If anyone has trouble
using SynthFont, in particular if there are difficulties with Jaws I could
try to help.
Regards,
--David.
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