[LAU] getting volume just right across soundfonts

[Andrew C]

Hey Luke,

Well, the main benefit of having all the soundfonts in one soundfont where
you can just change programs, is that you only need one channel for the
soundfont, instead of 4 different channels for each instrument. The bristol
b3 uses 3 channels for the upper, lower manuals and pedalboard, so that's 3
channels taken.

All in all, it just makes for more efficent usage of the 16 channels
available to you. Of course if you're happy with your current set-up, why
change? ;-)

One word about swami, I've found that it can be a buggy app for no reason at
all. Save very often is my advice!

Andrew.

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Luke Peterson <luke.peterson at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Andrew-
>
> I will look into swami. It would be good for me to learn how to do this
> myself. Thank you for the offer.
>
> As far as the soundfonts go, I'm using various "vintage" keyboard patches I
> found on the web.  I'm not sure of some of their licensing situations
> exactly ... links to the the latter two exist on enough reputable websites
> that if their creator didn't want them out there, I assume they'd be down.
> But that doesn't mean anything necessarily:
>
> http://www.pianosounds.com/freesoundfont.htm
> http://www.learjeff.net/sf/sf.html
>
> http://soundfonts.homemusician.net/piano_soundfonts/198-vl-1_wurlitzer_vs.html
> http://soundfonts.homemusician.net/piano_soundfonts/dsix_magic.html
>
> As for bristol I have played around with many of the available synths, but
> I'm really only using the -b3 switch at the moment. I anticipate that I will
> branch out soon.
>
> Re: control, I've been setting each patch to its own channel and just
> flipping the global channel on my controller to get sound from each one. I
> will experiment with your program select suggestion and see whether it gives
> me anything I don't already have. I suppose if I ever needed more than 16
> patches, I'd need to do something like that.
>
> -----
> Luke Peterson
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 10:50 AM, Andrew C <countfuzzball at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hey Luke,
>>
>> As far as I know, the only way to do what you want is to open each
>> soundfont with swami and edit the volume of each soundfont by hand. Then
>> (this would be a personal preference) pack it all into one 128 instrument
>> bank and then switch instruments via program select midi messages.
>>
>> Out of interest, which soundfonts/bristol synths are you using? If the
>> soundfonts are freely available/redistributable, I might download them and
>> try and normalise them for you.
>>
>> Andrew.
>>
>>   On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Luke Peterson <luke.peterson at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>>  Howdy folks,
>>>
>>> I am in need of wisdom: I have a dozen or so soundfonts I play in a live
>>> performance situation, each with their own average, max, and min dbs. I need
>>> to normalize each of these soundfonts to an average gain and similar range,
>>> so that I don't get hit in the head by a beer at my next show.
>>>
>>> Any tools out there that'll let me do this? I am playing through
>>> qsynth/fluidsynth and have a master gain but nothing (afaics) that allows me
>>> to give a preset gain with each patch -- so I need to (i think) unpack and
>>> re-build each soundfont with a goal volume range in mind, then use the
>>> master gain in qsynth to bring me up to a normal volume with bristol (which
>>> I also use, and is independently adjustable).
>>>
>>> Any advice is appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Luke
>>>
>>> -----
>>> Luke Peterson
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Linux-audio-user mailing list
>>> Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
>>> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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