27 May
2012
27 May
'12
6:33 p.m.
Hi everybody,
I'm planing to make a gamelan soundfont to use with linuxsampler. Nothing
really complicated: 1 sample per key, no sustain loops, some keys use 2
velocity layers.
I hesitate between GIG and SFZ format. Do they have different
possibilities, or are they just two ways to do the same things?
Also, what would be the workflow to create an SFZ file on linux?
Cheers to all,
Victor
27 May
27 May
7:05 p.m.
On 05/27/2012 07:33 PM, Victor A. Stoichita wrote:
Hi everybody,
I'm planing to make a gamelan soundfont to use with linuxsampler.
Nothing really complicated: 1 sample per key, no sustain loops, some
keys use 2 velocity layers.
I hesitate between GIG and SFZ format. Do they have different
possibilities, or are they just two ways to do the same things?
Also, what would be the workflow to create an SFZ file on linux?
Cheers to all,
Victor
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there's a gui editor for .gig.. sfz you edit by hand, once you get to
know sfz it, with a simple plaintext editor, is far superior than a gui
could ever be.. There is however a gui for windows that works in wine
called sfZed, it has a way of putting lots of rowchanges in the .sfz
file tho so the files have several times more lines than one edited by
hand.. makes it a pain in the butt to read/customize..
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVrDa5LNWylnZGZ6ejk4eHRfNDVjbmsyd3Zmag
7:08 p.m.
On Sun, 27 May 2012 18:33:35 +0200
"Victor A. Stoichita" <vicsto(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everybody,
I'm planing to make a gamelan soundfont to use with linuxsampler. Nothing
really complicated: 1 sample per key, no sustain loops, some keys use 2
velocity layers.
I hesitate between GIG and SFZ format. Do they have different
possibilities, or are they just two ways to do the same things?
Also, what would be the workflow to create an SFZ file on linux?
Cheers to all,
Victor
Use SFZ. It is an open format, text based.
Also sfz is more modern and has more options.
Workflow, I don't know if there are sfz editors. But writing one should be much much
easier than handling the gig format.
You should ask RytmenPinne who did the Salamander Piano and the Salamander Drums, both in
sfz format.
If anything fails you can still write it by hand with a texteditor.
Nils
7:19 p.m.
On 27 May 2012 19:04, Nils <list(a)nilsgey.de> wrote:
On Sun, 27 May 2012 18:33:35 +0200
"Victor A. Stoichita" <vicsto(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for the advice, and for the SFZ reference sheet!
I had seen sfzed, but I would not install wine just to use it. So I'm up
for building the soundfont in plain text. What's the quickest way to have
linuxsampler reload the file in order to hear the changes?
Victor
Hi everybody,
I'm planing to make a gamelan soundfont to use with linuxsampler. Nothing
really complicated: 1 sample per key, no sustain loops, some keys use 2
velocity layers.
I hesitate between GIG and SFZ format. Do they have different
possibilities, or are they just two ways to do the same things?
Also, what would be the workflow to create an SFZ file on linux?
Cheers to all,
Victor
Use SFZ. It is an open format, text based.
Also sfz is more modern and has more options.
Workflow, I don't know if there are sfz editors. But writing one should be
much much easier than handling the gig format.
You should ask RytmenPinne who did the Salamander Piano and the Salamander
Drums, both in sfz format.
If anything fails you can still write it by hand with a texteditor.
Nils
Hi, 
10:38 p.m.
On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Victor A. Stoichita <vicsto(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Use SFZ. It is an open format, text based.
I have always perceived SoundFont as a de facto standard for sampled
instruments. If instrument portability is a goal I think that's the way to
go.
-Neil
--
DJ Dual Core's Blog
http://oldmixtapes.blogspot.com/
Order without government; Peace without violence.
11:49 p.m.
On Sun, 27 May 2012 15:38:19 -0500
Neil <djdualcore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Victor A. Stoichita
<vicsto(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
sf2 was a de facto standard in the 90s by consumer grade people.
Don't use sf2 if you want to create a new sample.
The sf2 format is really not great. There is no support to counter round robin
("Machine effect") for example.
Nils
Use SFZ. It is an open format, text based.
I have always perceived SoundFont as a de facto standard for sampled
instruments. If instrument portability is a goal I think that's the way to
go.
-Neil
--
DJ Dual Core's Blog
http://oldmixtapes.blogspot.com/
Order without government; Peace without violence.
11:59 p.m.
On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Nils <list(a)nilsgey.de> wrote:
The sf2 format is really not great. There is no
support to counter round
robin ("Machine effect") for example.
What supports that and is portable?
-Neil
--
DJ Dual Core's Blog
http://oldmixtapes.blogspot.com/
Order without government; Peace without violence.
28 May
28 May
12:20 a.m.
On Sun, 27 May 2012 16:59:00 -0500
Neil <djdualcore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Nils
<list(a)nilsgey.de> wrote:
What do you mean by portable in this context?
The sf2 format is really not great. There is no
support to counter round
robin ("Machine effect") for example.
What supports that and is portable?
-Neil
12:41 a.m.
On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Nils <list(a)nilsgey.de> wrote:
What do you mean by portable in this context?
By "portable" I mean I can give the instrument to another musician and
reasonably expect them to have access to an app that supports the format.
If we were talking about word processors .doc would be portable and .wks
would not.
-Neil
1:05 a.m.
On Sun, 27 May 2012 17:41:10 -0500
Neil <djdualcore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Nils
<list(a)nilsgey.de> wrote:
The answer is yes. There are sfz players on any system. On Linux it is the Linuxsampler.
The samples itself are as portable as possible. You just copy the files, no installation,
registration in some registry or path needed.
Sfz internally works with relative paths, so you can move the whole dir structure around.
If you mean portable as in easy to manage there might be some problem. All sfz that I have
are seperated in samples and actual sfz text file. This might be inconvinient to organize.
But this is such an obvious flaw that I expect sfz to support uncompressed archives so
that you have just one file that you can move around.
Maybe other people can elaborate on that. My sfz knowledge is at its end now.
Nils
What do you mean by portable in this context?
By "portable" I mean I can give the instrument to another musician and
reasonably expect them to have access to an app that supports the format.
If we were talking about word processors .doc would be portable and .wks
would not.
-Neil 
12:34 a.m.
2012/5/27 Victor A. Stoichita <vicsto(a)gmail.com>om>:
I hesitate between GIG and SFZ format.
Since linuxsampler (svn-version) supports SFZ, I recommend that format.
It is flexible, has useful options and can easily be modified.
Record the audio-files as flac (or wav), and convert them to oga (ogg
audio) for use with SFZ format.
If you actually need a different format any time later, you can use
a (commercial) sample converter.
IIRC, sfz is supported by some commercial samplers too.
--
E.R.
12:55 a.m.
On Mon, 28 May 2012 00:34:04 +0200
Emanuel Rumpf <xbran(a)web.de> wrote:
2012/5/27 Victor A. Stoichita
<vicsto(a)gmail.com>om>:
All statements are good and correct except one.
Don't use a lossy compression format for samples (Flac is fine). You need as much
quality as you can in the sampled instrument business. Doing a good recording is hard
enough, you don't want to destroy it with technical errors like compressing your
samples. That is even one which could be easily avoided by not doing anything at all :)
I don't even know why ogg is allowed for sfz, they should have known better.
1) You'll get audible artifacts once you record, mix and especially recompress then
for the final mix.
2) Why the desire to compress at all? Sound quality aside I can only think of the filesize
and nobody has to care about filesizes anymore. All harddrives are big enough, you can
wait a bit longer for your download and Linuxsampler streams from the disk, so it
doesn't matter if the file is bigger or not for your RAM.
Nils
I hesitate between GIG and SFZ format.
Since linuxsampler (svn-version) supports SFZ, I recommend that format.
It is flexible, has useful options and can easily be modified.
Record the audio-files as flac (or wav), and convert them to oga (ogg
audio) for use with SFZ format.
If you actually need a different format any time later, you can use
a (commercial) sample converter.
IIRC, sfz is supported by some commercial samplers too.
--
E.R. 
9:52 a.m.
On 05/28/2012 12:55 AM, Nils wrote:
On Mon, 28 May 2012 00:34:04 +0200
Emanuel Rumpf <xbran(a)web.de> wrote:
RAM is the crux. You want to keep all the samples in memory so that they
can play was soon as you press a key without waiting for data from the
disk. But you're absolutely right: Never use lossy formats for
instrument samples.
One use-case for oga (or other lossy formats) is to assign whole songs
per key. ie a rather simple way to trigger background music. In that
case one won't re-encode or re-master the output. Yet the sampler engine
would need to support decoding on the fly (keep the lossy format in mem)
otherwise supporting lossy formats makes indeed no sense.
2c,
robin
2012/5/27 Victor A. Stoichita
<vicsto(a)gmail.com>om>:
All statements are good and correct except one.
Don't use a lossy compression format for samples (Flac is fine). You need as much
quality as you can in the sampled instrument business. Doing a good recording is hard
enough, you don't want to destroy it with technical errors like compressing your
samples. That is even one which could be easily avoided by not doing anything at all :)
I don't even know why ogg is allowed for sfz, they should have known better.
1) You'll get audible artifacts once you record, mix and especially recompress then
for the final mix.
2) Why the desire to compress at all? Sound quality aside I can only think of the
filesize and nobody has to care about filesizes anymore. All harddrives are big enough,
you can wait a bit longer for your download and Linuxsampler streams from the disk, so it
doesn't matter if the file is bigger or not for your RAM.
Nils
I hesitate between GIG and SFZ format.
Since linuxsampler (svn-version) supports SFZ, I recommend that format.
It is flexible, has useful options and can easily be modified.
Record the audio-files as flac (or wav), and convert them to oga (ogg
audio) for use with SFZ format.
If you actually need a different format any time later, you can use
a (commercial) sample converter.
IIRC, sfz is supported by some commercial samplers too.
--
E.R. 
10:04 a.m.
On 28/05/12 5:52 PM, Robin Gareus wrote:
RAM is the crux. You want to keep all the samples in
memory so that they
can play was soon as you press a key without waiting for data from the
disk. But you're absolutely right: Never use lossy formats for
instrument samples.
Why do you want to keep the whole sample in memory? As long as enough of
it is in memory to handle the immediate attack, it should be fine to
stream the rest of it. I believe that's what LinuxSampler does, and it
works very well with the 2GB Salamander Grand Piano, without needing to
take up 2GB of RAM.
Thanks
Leigh
10:21 a.m.
On 05/28/2012 10:04 AM, Leigh Dyer wrote:
On 28/05/12 5:52 PM, Robin Gareus wrote:
right. If you don't have solid-state storage just be sure to ask your
sysadmin to disable HDD power-saving. A spin-up procedure can take a few
seconds and the immediate attack may be longer than most samples.
Cheers!
robin
RAM is the crux. You want to keep all the samples
in memory so that they
can play was soon as you press a key without waiting for data from the
disk. But you're absolutely right: Never use lossy formats for
instrument samples.
Why do you want to keep the whole sample in memory? As long as enough of
it is in memory to handle the immediate attack, it should be fine to
stream the rest of it. I believe that's what LinuxSampler does, and it
works very well with the 2GB Salamander Grand Piano, without needing to
take up 2GB of RAM.
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14 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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alexander -
Emanuel Rumpf -
Leigh Dyer -
Neil -
Nils -
Robin Gareus -
Victor A. Stoichita