Soundfont players

What can I expect from a standard soundfont player?

The fruity soundfont player:

has an ADSR envelope and a few other controls.

I'm just curious.... should a soundfont player also have a filter env and other parameters?

  meneedit said:

What can I expect from a standard soundfont player?

 

The fruity soundfont player:

 

 

has an ADSR envelope and a few other controls.

 

 

 

I'm just curious.... should a soundfont player also have a filter env and other parameters?

I'm not sure how things are done these days, but I imagine that using just a player you're going to get bare bones editing. When I used sound fonts years ago I had a separate software program that I edited them in. However if you are just wanting to put another effect or filter on it, then use the player as is, and just add your effect into an effect slot on the mixer channel the sf player is used on.

I used sf files back in the days when I had my Akai S2000 sampler and was yearning for software sampling. But then kontakt came out and i stopped caring about any other means of sampling :). But they are still get resources and very handy.

From my previous experience , SF players were very simple and just played the file within your host. No bells and whistles. If you wanted to edit the actual sound, you had to get separate software (which i',m pretty sure you still have to). But to just add effects, it's as simple as using your insert effects on your channel mixer, as I mentioned.

NOt sure if I answered your question though. I don't use FL but from that screen shot I'd imagine that's all you have to work with. There's loads of other sf players/editors out there. Check out This Link and these others.

Here are some resources:

http://www.tutorial-pedia.com/tutorial/usi...layer_7279.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundFont

http://www.synthzone.com/soundfont.htm

http://www.soundfaction.com/alive/#editor (there's some free editors out there)

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/archive/inst...03-06/20614.php

http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48405

I've actually only recently got into soundfonts (despite the technology been waaaaay old) via the 'rgc:audio sfz' VSTi. They're pretty cool (especially the excellent (and free) Steinway piano one I got the other day) and so I can't really work out why they died off.

What is the advantage of SoundFonts exactly? I always felt like they were just like a way to compress wav?

Also, share Steinway soundfont plz!

I can't actually find the link (as loads of sites are blocked here from work) but look for: equinox grand piano soundfont (or possibly something like: Equinox Grand Pianos.sf2 ) which contains a Steinway and Yamaha piano at just under 100mb.

Soundfonts are basically the forerunner to the giga series. I just find them a lot less obtrusive to resources (plus are almost all entirely free) and simpler to pick up and play.

  ten fingers ten toes said:

What is the advantage of SoundFonts exactly? I always felt like they were just like a way to compress wav?

I don't really think there's too much of one these days. They are still useful, but I prefer raw wav forms. Years ago when sf came about the files were much more complex than wav files (b/c they contain midi messages) and were easier to play from the get go. However they were for a long time, lower quality than a regular uncompressed wav file . But you had the bonus of being able to share them online with their smaller file size while a lot of people were still on dial up. They also worked with some hardware samplers, and some synthesizers that weren't "samplers' and couldn't import wav files but could import sf files. . Also easier to fit on a scsi zip disk. Emu came up with the technology. They were supposed to replace standard Gm Midi banks since they were higher quality and easily stored. They run off of your sound card's audio processing so instead of using up your computer cpu, you use the dsp on the card. Which nowadays with a billion different sound cards doesn't really matter, but in the days where lots of people were making music on soundblaster cards, it was a lot of stress off your cpu.

From wiki:

  Quote

The most sophisticated sound cards use wavetables to read MIDI files. MIDI files don't contain any sounds but only instructions to render them. In SoundFont-compatible software you can use SoundFonts to render your music.

 

This kind of synthesis offers a more realistic effect, because its based on sampled sounds of real instruments of CD Quality or better. The SoundFont bank contains not only sounds but also other characteristics such as loops, vibrato effect, volume changing, etc.

 

A SoundFont bank contains .wav files that are mapped to sections on a keyboard for playback. A SoundFont-compatible sound card. A computer with such a card can yield results similar to those of a professional digital sampler.

 

SoundFont banks can conform to General MIDI, or use other sound formats.

  Quote

Why Would I Want To Use The SoundFont Format Over The Other Types Of Sound Formats Available?

Imagine being able to share a MIDI file, complete with your own custom sound sets. With SoundFont technology, the world can hear your music exactly the way you intended! External musical instruments (i.e., synthesizers and samplers) can be expensive and cumbersome for the amateur musician. Software synthesizers and samplers can drain your system's resources, especially when using more professional grade musical creation tools. Because SoundFont technology is hardware accelerated by the PCI-based Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy series of sound cards, it only needs to use your computer's RAM. Therefore, you can use the full power of your processor for making great music!

for those who are wondering what the advantage is.............

soundfonts can contain different samples for each note instead of one note being raised or lowered in a piano roll.

I think its awesome but it might be time to look for something where I can actually have different envelopes for every single note. becuase thats really what I want.

  Brandi_B said:

However if you are just wanting to put another effect or filter on it, then use the player as is, and just add your effect into an effect slot on the mixer channel the sf player is used on.

OMG!!!!!!!! dude, im so glad that you said that because you reminded me of something.

I have been meaning to ask if you can get an envelope as an actual effect. Does anything like that exist?

  meneedit said:

I think its awesome but it might be time to look for something where I can actually have different envelopes for every single note. becuase thats really what I want.

You just need a good software (or hardware if you don't have a powerful computer) sampler. You can achieve envelope like results with velocity but if you so desired could have a seperate envelope for every sound mapped to the keyboard. Or just set up a scaling modulation or keytracking in relation to whatever attack decay sustain or release amounts/times.

  Quote

OMG!!!!!!!! dude, im so glad that you said that because you reminded me of something.

 

I have been meaning to ask if you can get an envelope as an actual effect. Does anything like that exist?

You need a "gate" or an "envelope follower" to achieve those results. Something has to trigger an envelope to tell it when to begin and gate's usually can be set to be triggered by midi or audio levels, as can envelope followers (though typically triggered by the latter).

There's lots of free ones. The blue Gate is free and pretty decent. Check kvraudio.com for loads of free plugins. If you use a decent sampler you have an amp envelope that can be adjusted to whatever you need it to do in accordiance to the sample across the entire key range.

If you can't afford to buy anything new at the moment, and want to just continue with the FL sound font's just get some free gate's and envelope followers to hold you over until you can get a good software sampler.

If you want to take the plunge and get a software sampler, I highly recommend Native Instruments Kontakt. That program changed my life. But there are many others, halion, mercury, motu mach five, and gigastudio 3 are popular as well.