At 12:26 PM 5/25/05 +0200, Johannes Gebauer wrote: >Now, here is my problem: I am on a Mac. Therefor I have no means to open >soundfonts compressed in the V1 format of sfArk (V2 is fine). >Furthermore there is to my knowledge no tool on the Mac to open a >soundfont and replace certain patches, nor is it possible to use several >soundfonts at the same time (correct me if I am wrong). > >All I really want to do is use the Finale soundfont, but replace certain >patches, especially the dreadfully out of tune violin, with some better >ones. If someone can give me instructions on how to do this, please go >ahead.
Johannes, I know squat about Macs, but since they have a reputation in the music industry, I assume they're flexible. In any case, I see various soundfont players for Mac that use .sf2 format, which is the format of most of the freeware soundfonts. Here's one I found: http://andydrabble.users.btopenworld.com/soundfontsynth/moreinfo.html ... and he recommends the same Hammersound site that I often use, and used for some of the soundfonts in the Fields demo. Finale Windows has multiple groups of up to 64 channels. Each group can point to a different player (i.e., different Midi devices) (at least on Windows). So strings can be pointed to, say, channels 17-32, and channels 17-32 can be assigned to your soundfont player (vs. GPO for the sounds you like on channels 1-16). Finale has long had multiple Midi device support. My demos from the mid-1990s used 32 channels, the ancient MQX-32 Midi card, and 2 hardware devices (Proteus MPS+ Orchestral). But this is speculation with GPO. Not having GPO, I don't know if it gloms all your banks & channels, nor if it does, if it's crackable. And not having a Mac, I don't know if it has the 8 groups and 64 channels available in Finale, nor if the Mac allows multiple Midi devices (soft or hard). Just for background, the Fields demo used about 60 tracks (one soundfont player [i.e., one Midi device] per instrumental line), and was done in Sonar. It was a Sibelius output, but even if it had been Finale, Finale limits the number of Midi devices to eight -- and is not by itself a VST host (both LiveSynth Pro and sfz+ are VST). Matt Fields gave me the Midi files as output by Sibelius's 'human playback' equivalent. He provided multiple Midi files, pre-grouping the strings for me by normale, harmonics, sul pont, and pizzicato. We had limited time (basically a weekend, because he was on a submission deadline), so it was easier for him to filter the groups for me first rather than have me hunt for patch changes and convert them to device changes. I then modified the playback parameters for balance, swapped and stacked soundfonts for color, and made sure the soundfonts accepted his ranges (some soundfont authors are hard-line about never exceeding the upper limit in 19th century orchestration books!). Then we exchanged mp3 files until he was satisfied ... or at least until time ran out! Then I uploaded the whole thing uncompressed to my FTP site (over 110MB), and he downloaded and burned the CD and got it in the mail by postmark deadline. For really good demo work, by the way, Finale's 'human playback' Midi output can be pasted right into studio software, so I don't have to fiddle with Finale playback settings directly. (Human playback still crashes on some files on F2K5, but most seem to work.) Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
