[linux-audio-user] soundfonts and samplers

[Robert Jonsson]

Hi,

onsdagen den 11 augusti 2004 21.30 skrev Iván Almada:
> About SoundFonts:
> (reply to robert's soundfonts rants)
>
>
> i havent used soundfonts at all (never),  i was
> planning to use them as a last resort not because
> everybody has a bad attitude towards sf,  but what
> youve said that theyre monolithic,  when im composing
> i like to make new samples and load them in-the-fly to
> a sampler and then process the sample more with fx and
> stuff... and again... render to wave and then load- it
> again... maybe change some rythmic structures and then
> render again to audio and maybe the complete audio
> chunk load it as a whole audio track in ardour or some
> audio seq software with mixer to further process!!!
> thats the way i like to make music,  so the point is
> that soundfount could let me achieve this easily? or
> is it difficult to compile your own soundfonts... the
> other problem i think ill encounter is that sequencers
> cant record the audio directly from your soundcards
> wavetable... (please correct if im wrong)...

Oh, I don't think that is a problem, most soundcards have a selectable input, 
you can generally set it to record from several sound sources, including the 
wavetable.

>
> on the other hand ive been searching for sf and ive
> realized that maybe they will be very useful to me
> because you can load pre-made drum kits like a TR-909
> for example and use them easily just as if you had the
> real midi module...

Yes, this is a very good use of soundfonts, there are some excellent fonts on 
the net for old drum machines!

>
> another question: my soundcard has 4 synths built in
> right? does this means i can load 4 soundfont banks at
> the same time???

I'm not sure you said what soundcard you had, but with four separate synths it 
sounds like an sb-live right? 
It was a while since I tried this (I generally run fluidsynth which also uses 
soundfonts), I think they use the same "synth engine" though, so they have 
the same sounds. You can have a different sound for all 16 midi channels 
though, I recall it is somewhat hard to load fonts on all channels though, 
quite a bit easier with a softsynth like fluidsynth (especially with a 
frontend like Qsynth or the one in MusE).

> on the other hand ive realized specimen is a great
> sampler:  everything i need (preview .wav, map
> different regions, loop point editor, filter, though
> more different filters would be very very nice...) and
> i didnt know you could use it directly from rosegardan
> through alsa midi ,  that excelent,  just as if
> specimen was a plug in, i can trigger samples from my
> midi keyboard with an inperceptible latency,  now i
> would like to know several more things,  like how to
> apply ladpsa plugins to the sampler for example if i
> want to use some of the ladpsa filters... how is the
> audio routed from specimen back into the midi host
> mixer (it displays audio in a channel called rec... )
> but it has no slots for plug ins...

This is, as Chris mentioned, done with a mixer application, like Jack-rack 
(pending that specimen can output to jack, but I think it does). I think you 
could use Rosegarden as the mixer application also, I use MusE like this, add 
an input and connect the jack-app to it, this limits the number of apps I 
need to keep track of and most settings are stored in one place.

>
> anyone knows how to do this??? could this be done? or
> do i have to record the audio and then process it in a
> standard audio track ?
>
> thanx
> ivan.
>
>

/Robert


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