Very interesting, but far too complicated for my needs. All I need is
one soundfont with string sounds that sound like strings and aren't as
dreadfully out of tune as the one that comes with Finale.
Even if Mac users are pointed to the Hammersound site, as far as I know
there is no way to decode sfArk V1 archives. Unfortunately it seems that
the Langton violin sounds are in that format, and in that format only.
Furthermore, after having fiddled with the demo of polyphontics, the
only soundfont editor on the Mac afaik, I have decided that this thing
is not really usable for my purposes, as it doesn't allow me to load a
soundfont and only exchange certain patches. All it can do is build a
complete soundfont from scratch, and that's simply far too much time wasted.
Johannes
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz schrieb:
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
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