OK, I'll give some detailed descriptions on how to run SynthFont both alone and with QWS.
First, let's get SynthFont. We can get it from http://www.synthfont.com/ then go to downloads, and get SynthFont V1.112, I would recommend as an executable file. SynthFont comes with a tiny soundfont, called SYNTHGMS.SF2 which is installed onto its own directory, and which we can start using. It implements the whole GM instrument list, but not brilliantly. It can serve as a starting point though, until we get some additional soundfonts or patches. When we run SynthFont it will ask us for a default SoundFont file to use, for now we can use that one. After that, it will ask us for a midi file to open. It's a standard windows open file dialogue. Once we have opened a midi file, we get a lot of stuff on the SynthFont screen. Fortunately we don't need to bother about most of it. If we just want to convert the file into wav or other supported format, we need to click a button which is play to file. To do this with jaws, choose jaws cursor, jaws to PC, then use page up to go up to the title bar, go down 2 or three lines, and click the second "play to" button with the slash on the numeric keypad. We get a save dialogue box to choose the filename and where we want it to be saved. After we choose this, the program takes a while in converting the file, we can see the progress on the status bar, right at the bottom of the screen, which we can read on Jaws with insert+page-down. It's possible to change the particular instrument a channel uses, and even use several different soundfonts and samples for the same song. In order to do this, we must look with the jaws cursor for the track name and click it with left mouse button. After that, back in pc cursor, we can press f3 to choose the soundfont and f4 to choose the instrument. We can also use up and down arrow through navigate the tracks. It's probably possible to get to the tracks with enough tabbing and control-tabbing, but much slower. Now, to use SynthFont from QWS during sequencing. First we need to have MidiYoke installed. I refer here to http://andrelouis.com/qws/art/art007.htm where there are instructions to set up MidiYoke with QWS, including where to download it. Note for this you don't have to bother with any of the VST part of the process unless you plan to use VST for your own reasons. Now, let's run SynthFont. I should say here that SynthFont when it is run after the first time, presents a dialogue box with some buttons for donating to the author. Sometimes with Jaws this requires to alt-tab out of the application and alt-tab back in for us to be able to tab to the right button and activate it with the space bar. Once this is done, we get asked again for a midi file, we open anyone we want to. I have a short, one track midi file for these purposes, when I am intending to use SynthFont as a realtime synth. Now, let's go to the track in question as already described above. Once we are positioned there, we must do shift-tab a few times, until we here options. I've tried clicking on this button with the jaws cursor and for some reason that doesn't work for me. Anyway, once the focus is on options, we press space and bring up the options menu. From there we can configure several aspects of the functioning of SynthFont, I'll here only go into 2 important aspects. First, go to the IO ports tab. Here you should choose the MIDI OUT ports that SynthFont will listen to. You can choose for instance the first MidiYoke port, or if you have external instruments, keyboards, etc, you can choose those as well or in addition, although you can also use QWS as a midi through box which will send all the data to the MidiYoke. In addition, you should choose what sound devices to use. In particular, if you have ASIO drivers you'd probably want to choose those. If not, buffers are important. Personally I've obtained best results with 3072 samples and 2 buffers. Once you have chosen your settings, you can test them out by pressing the space bar when the focus is on "test playback". You should here a clean, continuous sine wave tone. If the tone sounds choppy, you need to increase samples or maybe buffer number. In addition to these settings, you should take a look at least at the Synth Engine tab, where you can configure several aspects of the synthesizer's functioning, such as the frequency of vibrato for the modulation wheel and that kind of thing. There is also a buffer setting here, which controls the level of buffering when playing midi files outloud directly to the sound card (not to a file). I haven't bothered much with it, as I don't mind waiting a bit for playback to start (we're talking of maybe 1-2 seconds here). After we've set the options correctly, we choose OK, and we're back in the options button. We can tab back to the track name, which is a good resting position to be in. After this, in order to activate midi input, we need to navigate with the jaws cursor to the 3rd or 4th line, and on the right of the line, click on a button called midi input. Note that while midi input is active it is not possible to change soundfonts, change instruments, open new midi files, etc. Midi input can be deactivated at any time by clicking that button again. Now we just go to QWS, and create a track as usual. We set the port to Out to MIDI Yoke 1, and we're ready to play. SoundFonts: This is very subjective, but of what I have found, the best has been the General User SoundFont. It is not incredibly huge, only about 30meg. One can get it from http://www.schristiancollins.com going to SoundFonts. I've just noticed it's a GS, not GM, font. I also have a set of Gravis Ultrasound patches (.pat) files called eawpats12 which I have found useful. To be honest, with many of these things, the legality of the fonts and patches is just not very clear, as very often people who compile them are not quite sure themselves if they were intended for anyone's use, if commercial use is permitted, etc. However, for my personal use, I don't think it is too much of a big deal. If anyone knows of other useful fonts, I'd be interested. I've read of a font called Crisis General Midi Soundfont, which is huge and only for non-commercial use, but I haven't tested it out yet. Hope this information is useful and clear, questions on anything are welcome, to the extent of my knowledge, which is not much greater than what I've written here! :-) Regards, --David. To unsubscribe or change list options, see http://lists.andrelouis.com for archived list posts, see http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
