[LAU] What kind of sample(er)s etc for classical music

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:11 AM, Lorenzo <lsutton at libero.it> wrote:
> Dear Josh,
>
>> and had VERY deep pockets,
>>
> Not that deep :)... Also I guess one would have to further invest in the
> samples/plugins.

What? You don't want to spend $12,460 to buy the Symphonic Cube? With
792,953 samples that's only 1.5 cents/sample. Actually quite cheap!
;-)

>
> So to try and summarise (please take this as a completely 'neutral'
> consideration no 'linux, gnu extremist' etc simply trying to clear the
> situation):
>
> Software-wise the only sample technology supported 'natively' in Linux
> is SoundFont and Giga.
> The former offering many freebies of different quality and some
> commercial products, the latter possibly offering good better sound and
> performance (?) quality but hoard to find (albeit commercially) due to
> current 'executable plug-in' hype.

I don't think it's quite that dire. The obvious one is .wav which is
used by Acid Pro. I've not had any trouble loading Acid loops in
Linux, although there aren't any mature tools to really use them
right.

If we limit ourselves to orchestral sounds then .gig is probably the
best supported today, albeit by a non-GPL Linux program. I think .gig
viability is possibly in flux with Tascam's exit. Keep in mind that
while the OP was asking about classical sounds, there is a lot more to
sampling than just classical, and a lot more to classical than just
orchestral.

I looked up the formats supported by Kontakt so we might have a wider
reference to discuss.

http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/kontakt-4/?page=972

I suspect that one format we'd want to dig into a bit might be .exs.
That's the native format supported by the Logic Pro EXS24 sampler on
the Mac so it's probably going to be around a while. I simply don't
know that anyone has looked into how it works.


>
> Midi-driven hardware is of course 'supported' (be it dedicated sampler,
> windows/mac machine used asmidi  'hardware', keyboard sampl etc.) with
> all the costs and benefits of having an external dedicated piece of
> hardware of course.
>
> Does this depict the picture fairly enough?

Seems fair enough to me.

>
> This brings to another question:
> What is the situazion of the SFZ standard
> (http://www.cakewalk.com/DevXchange/sfz.asp) and the alleged
> collaboration and will to work on this by Garritan
> (http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/04/01/garritan-rescues-giga-sampling-technology-talks-open-standards/)?
> Support for sfz in linuxsampler seems to be alive but slow:
> http://bb.linuxsampler.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=186&start=30
> And again what support will there be for the format?

I really don't think it's that the format *won't* be supported. If NI
supports it, which they do, then it's supported. The question might be
whether future sound file developers support it. Reasonably, there
will be fewer over time.

>
> Hope I haven't bored anyone :)
> Lorenzo

:-) :-) Not me obviously! ;-)