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Topic: What is a waveset? (Read 3007 times) previous topic - next topic

What is a waveset?

What is a "waveset"? How is a 8 meg waveset better than a 2 or 4 meg set?

Pardon these daft questions...

Re: What is a waveset?

Reply #1 –
"Waveset" also known as "Sound font". It's a collection of actual recordings of instrument sounds, usually with different variations corresponding to different velocity ranges, to give (for example) the different timbre of a piano played softly, or struck hard.

Larger sound font collections are larger because they have more sounds, more dynamic variants within each basic sound, more complex sounds, or combination of the above. All other things being equal, larger sound font files will give truer renditions than smaller files.

Re: What is a waveset?

Reply #2 –
As I understand it (correction invited) Wavesets are not exactly the same as soundfonts. Wavesets are used by Creative SB PCI cards (and Ensoniq??). I believe they have a proprietary format that hasn't been released to third parties. There are currently only three wavesets available 2, 4 and 8 Mb. These provide different quality versions of the same sets of sounds (bigger is better). Soundfonts, on the other hand come in a many more flavours and are often produced by third parties, based on recorded samples from a variety of sources.

Stephen Randall

Re: What is a waveset?

Reply #3 –
Well Stephen you seem to have it right. Either way. All I can say is that Presently with my new SBLive Player. The 8MB Soundfont provided sucks big time compared to my previous SB Vibra128 8MB Waveset. Someone proove me wrong and tell me where I can Get a descent SoundFont.
 

Re: What is a waveset?

Reply #4 –
You're on the right track - I'm amazed how many buy a Live card than whinge about the sounds that came with it instead of loading a good soundfont.

Try hammersound - all the soundfonts you can eat!
http://www.hammersound.net

Depends on the sound you're after.
For the big-band stuff I do the Chaos 8Mb suits me fine.
It's all I can get to fill my AWE32 + 8Mb RAM.