Re: DUMB SOUNDFONT QUESTIONS... JEREMY?

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Posted by Jeremy D. on September 27, 2002 at 08:54:15:

In Reply to: DUMB SOUNDFONT QUESTIONS... JEREMY? posted by PMROZ on September 26, 2002 at 23:01:22:


[snippage]

: So how do i go about putting my favorites together into one gm bank?
: using vienna, do i have to copy all the instruments to one bank? or is it melodic presets i copy? or do i create banks in bank manager?

It's the melodic presets you copy. Have the new soundfont bank you're building open in the main window, and use Bank manager to open the source you're copying from. You can drag and drop the melodic preset entry from Bank Manager to the new soundfont, just drop it onto the words Melodic Pool under Preset Section, and all the relevant samples and instrument zones will be copied over too. This ought to work without you having to copy over the samples individually and rebuild all the parameters.


: or the configure instr/bank window? can i save the configuration if i do it that way?
I've yet to find any use *whatever* for the configure instrument/bank window in AudioHQ!


: do i need to have 128 voices in a default sf2 (one i can load into the configure bank window just like i do with the 8mb, or chaosbank et al).

No, you can leave lots of slots empty, and just build a bank with the sounds you want. It doesn't even have to be General MIDI in layout (if you want a trumpet in patch 0, and a grand piano in patch 26, go right ahead). The advantage of GM of course is that it's standard, so other people listening to your sequences will get the same basic instrumentation without having to have your exact soundfont. But if you're going to master the music to audio rather than distribute it as a MIDI, there's really no reason why you shouldn't customize the soundfont bank exactly as you like.

: i always clear the 4mb then load another... i'd like to map the instruments to the same patches as gm, but i'm only using about 30 instruments tops (plus drums). i'm going for quality instead of quantity so there's still about 28meg

That's what I do most of the time - have a high quality partial GM set, and simply leave blank anything I'm not using.


: last night i loaded all the sounds to the correct instrument numbers using configure instrument window, they sounded great but when i turned the computer back on i got 4mb gm and no joy. don't tell me i have to load them individually every time!!!! is there a way to save?

This problem turns up with specific versions of the drivers. Which ones are you using? I recommend LiveWare 3 with the driver update of May 2001 if you can get it; this seems to fix the greatest number of old bugs and introduce the smallest number of new ones. I'm not sure how recently Creative have issued new Live drivers for Win9x, but if there are any recent ones, my advice is to avoid them. Their soundfont support seems to get buggier each time.

: anybody use other sf editors? how are they? ps sf express loader site is down...

Yeah, Vienna has a bit of a fiddly interface though I use it because having got used to its quirks it *is* functional. There are programs that make things easier. E.g. there's a third-party rival to Vienna called Alive (still in development but worth trying the demo) at http://www.soundfaction.com/alive/
or E-mu's soundfont librarian at http://developer.creative.com/music/DC_D&H_Music-sfmix.asp
Both of those will let you have two or more open windows simultaneously and simply copy and paste between them. Personally the last time I tried Alive it didn't seem quite ready for the big time, but the developers have been working very hard on it, and it has obvious promise. Of course, it isn't free!


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