Sorry for sounding stupid, but being that I have had zero experience with
getting new synths other than what I already have, and soundfonts are also
not in my small bin of knowledge, I am altogether confused. I am a Jaws
user, so, in that perspective, how would one get started using this, midi to
wav is really all I need but if other midi applications can use it, I
wouldn't mind trying to get that to work. I can live with MS for anything
but Midi to Wav, or midi to any other digital audio format since that is the
only thing I have right now, except Creative which I am, and always had,
problems with. As a side note if there were any audio samples crawling
around the internet, I'd also like to give some of the free, more common
soundfonts a listen to know what I'm looking at.
Thanks much for the help. This is quite interesting!
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Picón Álvarez" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "QWS list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 1:19 PM
Subject: QWS List Alternative synths, a bit of information.
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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