Dominic Genest wrote: timidity comes with a fairly decent set of samples. it might just work if you popen(3) it, directing its output to stdout so you can mix it into your application's sound. upon EOF, you can simply repeat from popen(). iirc, SDL has some MIDI/music capabilities based on timidity, too. but i don't really know for sure. tim

On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 03:52:38PM -0500, Dominic Genest wrote: I would have to completely disagree. It isn't that one is "better" than the other, they both have pluses and minuses. At a certain level, however, you can achieve roughly the same overall efficiency. A properly coded software synthesizer is by all means more versatile and more likely to make things sound "natural", but on the other hand, this is only if your music (and the synthesizer) take proper advantage of MIDI's "expressive controls". The most important of which is velocity, I'd say. If you don't plan on using any velocity information, you can do the same thing with a good set of samples (~one per octave per instrument) and a tracker as you could with a MIDI synth that uses up around the same amount of system resources. You could also do this with timidity, but I kinda think a tracker would be more intuitive... I mean, timidity isn't exactly a synthesizer, it works pretty much like a tracker as far as I can tell. To find a true "synth" that runs with this much efficiency and sounds just as good as the tracked (or timidity) option, I think it would be easier to find the nice piano samples. Of course, if you're willing to shell out more system resources (mostly processing power) to make your velocity information truly "synthesize" the sounds in an expressive manner, that would certainly sound better. The thing that you (IMHO) want to figure out is if you can sacrifice that processing power and resources, and if a good synth like that even exists... which is why you're asking... but I just thought I'd toss out the tracker/timidity option as a truly viable alternative if you can't find something that sounds better at a reasonable resource level. Cheers, 784 - Michael C. Piantedosi - drclaw(a)dogsolitude.org

On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 04:12:17PM -0600, RTaylor wrote: I was just attempting to point out that the formats themselves do not constrain the ability of the composer to write music in one style or another. You could write a piece with an acceptable piano simulation in either format. What constrains the composer is the amount of support for "piano" sounds he could find related to these formats. If this was a commercial project, I could think of numerous commercial MIDI synths that have decent piano simulations, the problem is that I personally haven't heard any good piano simulations of the free software variety, and plugging in your own piano sounds is just as easy with a tracked song as with a MIDI song. Cheers, 784 - Michael C. Piantedosi - drclaw(a)dogsolitude.org

On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 12:05:24PM -0600, RTaylor wrote: Module files are usually a reasonable compromise between quality and size for soundtracks. The disadvantage of tracker files compared to MIDI is that they are larger since they contain the samples. The advantage is that you know they will sound identical no matter where they are played and whether or not the end user has MIDI hardware or not (if not, then you are also saving them CPU time on the soft MIDI synthesis, and perhaps sounding better if they have only a crappy wavetable GM). They are advantageous compared to raw PCM streams also due to the small size (like dictionary compression almost if you consider the repeatedly used samples to be the "words" of the dictionary). That advantage is mitigated somewhat due to high quality PCM compression such as vorbis. Certain styles of music such as techno and instrumental music lend themselves exceedingly well to module formats, where music with voice tracks and lots of embellishments and such would probably be better off composed solely in digital audio. Recent games such as Unreal and Age of Wonders (among others I'm sure) still employ module formats for their soundtracks. (.IT, .XM) No. Open module formats can be played in any program. MikMod (used by SDL_mixer) supports a lot of them out of the box. You are correct though that a tracker software (such as classic DOS trackers, or open source SoundTracker) is usually required to compose most efficiently. You can usually use a tracker or module player to easily export module files to digital audio. -- Ryan Underwood, <nemesis(a)icequake.net>

Dominic Genest wrote: I would say instead that MODs are WYHIWYG (what you HEAR is what you get), i.e., it *always* sounds the same because there's no dependency upon an external synth and/or patch set. To me, the great trade-off between MIDI and MOD files has to with space. It's not so big a deal anymore if we're talking about net transfers, but embedding MOD music might be too weighty for an app (though it certainly doesn't have to be: 8-bit samples at 22050 Hz SR might do fine in even a lighter weight game). MIDI files are of course extremely light and compact, but they are absolutely dependent upon external sound sources. I'm not sure MIDI or MOD makes any difference to the composer's intention, but the issue of playback quality is crucial here. The MOD file includes its sound sources, so it will sound the same every time. If the sound quality is critical to an app I'd go with the MOD file. If the sound is utterly incidental and can be rendered as well by an OPL3 as by TiMidity (and I don't mean "sounds as good as", I'm merely referencing implementation), then MIDI is the way to go. However, it's also worth noting that in either instance an embedded player is required, which in Linux is typically playmidi or TiMidity for MIDI, MikMod for MOD files (though there are alternative MOD player libs now). I suppose this is true for late-comers to electroacoustic music. Those of us "persons of a certain age group" who own a considerable amount of external MIDI gear would heartily disagree with your assessment. ;) Btw, you can certainly use a GM patch set as sound sources for MOD, but again, the quality of your patch set will be a permanent aspect of the audio output. Another consideration: If the designer wants to use MIDI he must probe for either an existing patch set or a hardware MIDI synthesizer, then configure itself accordingly (or be configured by a dialog when setting up the app). Someone else wrote: Umm, yes, considerable innovation throughout the computer industry has occurred since then... ;-) But that message does raise the point: higher quality samples almost inevitably require more storage space, so again the question of weight is raised. In the end, the real issue is the relative importance of the music in the app. If it's incidental tunes or riffs, then it's no big deal. Anything more important may in fact run the risk of misrepresentation via someone's sub-par MIDI system. Btw, I find it interesting that so many users identify MIDI with a soundcard capability. Of course the spec was designed originally for external gear, and that's still my first association. Don't get me wrong, I *like* having a MIDI-aware synth on-board my soundcard, but I've yet to hear one that can compete with the gear in my rack. Processing helps a lot, but it's still tough for a single chip to beat what amounts to an entire machine dedicated to digital sound synthesis. Best, dp

Hi, On Monday 02 February 2004 16.33, Dave Phillips wrote: I think it was mentioned before, but I'd just like to take another swing at prerendering your soundtrack and encode it with OGG. This is commonly used by games today and especially if you distribute by CD a _very_ good approach. It will take more space then your average module or midi file. But it also is unprecedented in sound quality and authenticity. With OGG you'll probably get away with coding in 64kbps (ogg is variable bitrate so it might vary a bit) or lower I read somewhere about a guy experimenting with stereo recordings at 4kbps. This means you should be able to get a 10 minute soundtrack in 6 MB(64kbps)... If you are thinking of distributing on diskettes this might not be feasible ;) /Robert

Dominic Genest wrote: I think perhaps a better terminology might be "ideation" and "realization". But again, ideation has nothing to do with a file format. Agreed. Quality of playback is a dependent issue. A MOD might sound every bit as good as a MIDI file rendered by my synths, and vice-versa, but in both instances they are dependent on where the data is headed, i.e., the means utilized to realize the data into sound. The MOD depends upon the quality of the sounds used within the MOD file, a MIDI file depends upon the quality of the sounds utilized outside of the MIDI file (which of course has no sounds within itself). Best, dp

On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 01:23:51PM -0500, Dominic Genest wrote: I think that an 8-bit 22kHz "flac" would have greater similarity to a "gif" of a site (low bit depth, lossless compression), while a "mod" would have greater similarity to a tarball of the "html" and "png" files that make up the site. I'd say that the "mid" representation is more akin to distributing an html file by itself but with properly descriptive alt tags letting you know what you ought to see in the empty spots so you may fill them in as necessary. Of course if you give this to a motivated graphic designer, the site may well look better than the version you dreamed up... :) Personally, I write rather experimental music, and some of the sounds and effects necessary for certain segments aren't easy to replicate on a stranger's equipment, so I often prefer to exercise the extra control. If I just wrote something for an equal tempered solo piano, I suppose a ".mid" would suffice, though I would certainly recommend installing some quality soundfonts ;P Cheers, 784 - Michael C. Piantedosi - drclaw(a)dogsolitude.org

On Wed, 2004-01-28 at 15:52, Dominic Genest wrote: Compose in MIDI and use fluidsynth - it's literally designed for this sort of thing (embedding in a game) as someone's already pointed out. You can get some pretty respectable sounding piano soundfonts from hammersound.net, many of them barely a few megs. (Soundfonts are still around from the AWE-with-little-RAM days, so they're optimized to be as small as possible. I have a ~240k piano here somewhere that you could get away with in a mix) -Dave

Hallo, Frank Barknecht hat gesagt: // Frank Barknecht wrote: Forgot to say: libfluidsynth can be built on MS-Windows and OS-X, too. You should check it out. ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__