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Topic: SoundFonts and external banks (Read 12742 times) previous topic - next topic

SoundFonts and external banks

I'd be glad if there's anyone to tell me how to include SoundFont devices or external banks in my NWC's, or if it's possible? [I'm lucky enough to have a SB Live Platinum ;) ]

Re: SoundFonts and external banks

Reply #1 –
You cannot embed your sound fonts in a *.NWC file. You can use them, however, provided your synthesizer supports them (as you know, the SB Live does support them).

Re: SoundFonts and external banks

Reply #2 –
Thank you.
Well, but what is the bank selection in the MIDI dialog box,then?

Re: SoundFonts and external banks

Reply #3 –
Its a shame really that for so long none of our colleagues out there have provided you with the answer. It seems to me that there is an unspoken law that a new creative user must graduate to adulthood by finding out how his/her equipment functions on his/her own by trial and error. I don't like this attitude and therefore now that I have spotted your thread I will help you to my best of knowledge. I apologise for not assisting you earlier, but a trip to greece combined with an infernal crash of my PC that caused me to install linux and forget windows and doors and conservatories, kept me away from the net.

So.
You wanna work with soundfonts. Open Audio HQ and under that select Soundofnt. Now you got a few tabs to play with there. On the first, the one you are on when the app opens, is where you load and unload them. I assume you know a bit but, a soundofnt is a collection of instrument/sound samples that have been mapped and characterised in such a fashion so that their playback produces -or tries to produce- (not necessarilly, but usually) a realistic instrument sound. The samples are combined/mapped totally or partially on the MIDI keyboard range (128 notes, 0-127) to achieve this, and that on its own constitutes an instrument. So for instance 10 piano samples are mapped to a range of keys centering on the key each sample was obtained by, so that playing every key under MIDI will resemble piano. Samples can also be mapped according to how hard a key is pressed (known as attack velocity). Additionally, the MIDI key range a sample covers can overlap with another samples' range (so if keys 023-033 have a rain sample, you can put a thunder sample to be played back on range 030-045, or 023-033, or 020-050 or even 000-127, in which case every note on the MIDI keyboard
will play the thunder sample, accompanied by the rain sample in keys 023-033). Technically, in an instrument you can put any number of samples to be played back.

MIDI doesn't playback necessarily one instrument only. This is a bit tricky. MIDI has 16 stereo playback channels per synthesiser. SBLive has three; two hardware synths (Live A and Live B) and a software synth (Wavesynth; this has its own samples and is frankly very cacky!). At any timepoint, a single synth can be playing 16 voices simultaneously, but not necessarily 16 instruments only. This is because a "voice" can be mapped to correspond to 1 or more instruments found in the soundfont. This is not controlled in NWC itself, but in the soundfont, because that is what contains the voices. NWC and any MIDI sequencer just tells the voices what notes to play and how.

In the soundfonts, a "voice" is known as a bank. This bank therefore, can contain any number of instruments. For the specific back, each instruments' properties can be tweaked to differ from the template instrument, but the template itself remains unaffected i.e. the piano instrument described above can be placed in the centre in stereo sound (known also as panned to the centre) in the tempalte, yet a bank can be configured specifically to playback the piano panned to the right. Another bank can continue to play it at teh centre, if not instructed otherwise. Also the bank can be adjusted to affect the playback of all the instruments it contains. So if you set a global control under a bank to modulate the playback, all instruments included in teh bank will modulate. I.e. the piano will modulate, and pan to the right as well.

Finally, there can be 128x128=16384 different banks, because the addresses of banks are described by two numbers that range both from 0-127. I.e. it is like a table of 128 rows and 128 columns, containing 16384 cells. The number of possible instruments and samples is infinite. The only limit to the story is the amount of memmory your PC has, so, if you want to take my advice, start collecting some dosh for a memo upgrade. Want to know why? Go to http://liste.to.hammersound and you'll get my point!

So going back to the soundfont app in Audio HQ, the first window allows you to manipulate the loading of soundfotns onto memmory. The way I understand it is that the first loaded SF (soundfotn) is the primary SF, whose used banks are used by MIDI sequencers. Secondary SFs fill up the gaps, i.e. the banks left free by the primary SF (i.e. those that the soundfont does not map any instruments to). To do this, the used banks in the secondary SF must be mapped to the addresses of the empty banks of the primary SF, or else they will be (unfortunately) loaded and (yet) disregarded by the sequences. So if the primary SF uses banks 000-000 through to 000-110, the secondary SF's banks, in order to be played back must be mapped from 000-111 to 127-127 (i.e 000-111 to 000-127 and 001-000 to 001-127 and 002-000 to 002-127, and so on and so forth). Secondary SF banks are known also as external banks.

The second tab claims that allows you to manipulate the banks themselves, which is quite amusing considering the fact that to load/unload a bank, the corresponding SF must be loaded/unloaded first! And all it contains too! The one thing you can really do here is check what banks are occupied and by which soundfont. So you can then open Vienna and map the banks of the SF you which to load to empty slots. It does have its use...

The third tab controlls the amount of memmory allocated to soundfonts. I believe the default to be 12MB. That can easily change by dragging the bar to.... <drum roll> ...the 1/2 of your maximum physical memmory! So if you are running a 32 or 64 MB RAM PC, I hope for your nerves' sakes the shops are open for you to go and upgrade! As you can hear, even the 8mb SF provided with the live! that contains a large number of sounds is rather not convincing of fantastic quality. That is because the samples used are limited and far from the real McCoy. Go to Hammersound and you 'll come accross a SF known as Campbells' Piano that is 25MB big! That is ONE piano. And the guy has posted thre of them, each at that size. I really hope the shops are open mate!

S

PS: Hope that helps a bit!

Re: SoundFonts and external banks

Reply #4 –
If all that didn't confuse you - try this site.
http://atlas.hemmet.chalmers.se/livecenter/showpage.php?id
"Soundfonts How To ?"

Check out the entire site - there is much there to interest an SB Live user.

I don't know how the Live card addresses soundfonts in banks but on my AWE32 you can load different soundfonts into User Banks 0 to 127.
Bank 0 is the default bank - I have a user 8Mb soundfont in there that I use as my default but (if I had more memory) I could load other soundfonts in Banks 1 to 127 and since I have to load them I know what is in each bank!

OK - so you have loaded some soundfonts into the user banks - how do you reach them and use them in NWC.

First under Tools>Options>Midi(Tab) select the Live Synth that you would like to use as your playback device.
(I'm sorry I don't have a Live card - this is a bit intuitive - It's important to use the correct synth or the sound will be less than you expect - a Live User might help here!)

Once you have selected your Live synth as a playback device
you can assign each staff in your score to use whatever Bank you have soundfonts loaded in your Live card.
For example you may have the Chaos 8Mb GM sf loaded in the default user (0) Bank and a good Violin (one instrument) sf loaded in Bank 1.

To set the playback instrument for each staff use the menu options Staff>Playback Instrument and select the instrument patch for the instrument using this staff.
(you should set up the staff using Staff>Staff Properties but it's easier to explain the Bank set up from the Playback Instrument dialogue).
You can do this for all your GM instrument sounds that use the (0) default Bank.

Now if you want to use the Good Violin sf in Bank 1 then
in the Staff>Playback Instrument dialogue ignore the patch list for the moment and Enable "Select Different Patch Bank".
Most Soundblaster cards use Controller 0 only to select banks. (the Live may be different - check your documentation).
To select User Bank 1 on the AWE32 I would enter 1 in the Controller 0 box.
If the soundfont in bank (1) contained a complete GM list of instruments you could select your patch from the list in this dialogue box.
In this example the Good Violin is the only patch in the soundfont so you would select "Patch List Type" as Numeric 0 based or Numeric 1 based depending on how your card selects patches.
When either of these is selected the patch list will show numbers rather than instrument patch names.
Select 0 or 1 in the Patch List to select the Good Violin single sound in the soundfont in User Bank 1.

Hope this hasn't confused you more!
If I have made mistakes here someone will correct me - they always do!

Good Luck - Barry

Re: SoundFonts and external banks

Reply #5 –
to Sterghios A. Moschos and Barry Graham;
Thanks, I've been using the sound fonts.