[linux-audio-user] Questions about qsynth, swami and soundfonts

[Rui Nuno Capela]

> Having located a collection of soundfonts that I like, I'm interested in
> performing. I like the graphical interface to qsynth for loading and
> using soundfonts, but there are a couple of limitations for live
> performance it seems. Maybe these things are ignorance on my part and if
> so I hope that somebody can put an end to that state.
>
> First, in order to change the current soundfont, you've got to select
> Channels, then right click on the channel you want to change and hunt
> for the soundfont you want in that channel. This is partially mitigated
> by having presets, but what that implies to me is that I'd have to have
> a preset for every soundfont program that I ever want to use. What I'd
> really like is a simple list of all the programs and be able to select
> the one I want with one click. How do others deal with this?
>
> Second, it seems that soundfonts can hide other soundfonts. In other
> words, the order in which you place the soundfonts in setup/soundfonts
> matters. If you've got a soundfont that claims the same program number
> that comes after another soundfont in the list, that program hides the
> other one. Even in the best of worlds this would be a problem - the best
> of worlds defined as one in which the soundfont authors actually used
> the suggested midi program numbers for standard instruments (i.e. 64 for
> Soprano Sax, etc). It is a problem since many soundfonts have the same
> instrument with different tones (Hard Tenor Sax, Soft Tenor Sax) which
> would both want to use the same number, but can't within the same
> soundfont. In the world that we live in however, soundfont authors often
> ignore the midi program numbers and just number their programs from 1
> all to commonly, which exacerbates the hiding problem. Now, the hiding
> seems gratuitous since qsynth assigns each soundfound an SFID
> (presumably soundfont ID) which means that if the key was SFID/program
> number then it wouldn't matter that two soundfonts used the same range
> of numbers, but for some reason in qsynth this does seem to matter. I
> don't believe this is a generic issue since the same collection of
> soundfonts in freewheeling allows one to browse through each soundfont
> and select any program in that soundfont.
>
> Having encountered this problem, I decided to take matters into my own
> hands and renumber the conflicting soundfonts so there was no conflict.
> Having produced my own soundfont for Soprano Sax (recently corrected for
> some notes tuning available at http://juraview.com/SopranoSax.sf2) using
> swami, I didn't feel any hesitation about loading the fonts and
> renumbering the programs. Unfortunately I can't find any way to renumber
> the programs in swami which is weird since I distinctly remember having
> done this with my soprano sax font, but this was well over a year ago.
> Has this capability been removed from swami or am I just missing it?
>
> Any suggestions (other than FOAD) will be appreciated.
>

Hint: Bank-offsets.

When you set one soundfont with a non-zero bank-offset, all its bank
numbers will be shifted accordingly. That way, those banks might be
accessible, otherwise hidden by same bank numbers of some other soundfont.

Note: make sure you're using the latest Qsynth 0.2.5; previous versions
had this bank-offsetness uselessly broken ;)

Cheers.
-- 
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc at rncbc.org