Soft Synths and Virtual Instruments II

[JohnG]

Hi All,

Thought I'd start a new thread here to talk about further discoveries after messing up with SynthFont.

First is to report upon another little utility called SyFonOne. It comes from the same place as SynthFont and is designed to be a Sound Font player for regular sequencing software (or DAWs if you prefer) like Cakewalk. It needs a MIDI s/w connection utility like MIDIyoke, and I can report that it works okay with XGworks in Windows XP.

So XGworks MIDI output set to MIDIyoke1, and then the input to SyFonOne also set to MIDIyoke1. In SyFonOne set the audio output port, load the font library, set up audio buffers, load a MIDI file into Xgworks and play it. Bingo!

If you locate it within the same directory as Synthfont when you install it, it is able to pick up whatever Sound Fonts you have loaded there. If not just point it to the directory where they are located..

It has a mechanism for setting audio latency by adjusting buffer size etc. to make sure you get glitch free playback.

There is also a little utility VSTfont that allows you to load Sound Fonts into it and act as a VST virtual instrument. I tried it within VSThost and it worked too. So more advanced DAWs that use the VST mechanism can also use Sound Fonts.

Confused? I'm sure you are!

JohnG.

[JohnG]

For those who are using XP, Vista or Win 7 the internal MIDI link program that should work is called LoopBe1. It can be found here www.nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html.

It offers a single MIDI port, i.e. 16 channels of MIDI data, and is free. Using it you should be able to connect your sequencing program e.g. Cakewalk (if you can get that running okay in e.g. Win 7) to SyFonOne. SyFonOne can load the Sound Font you want for playback from Cakewalk.

A little convoluted but it should work OK. I tried it with XP and XGworks as follows:

Load LoopBe1, then XGworks then SyFonOne.
XGworks MIDI output 1 set to LoopBe1.
SyFonOne loaded with JClive SoundFont MIDI input set to LoopBe1, SyFonOne set to 'play'.
SyFonOne audio output set to HDMI device (connected screen with speakers).
Load a MIDI file into XGworks and hit play. File plays fine with a slight latency, in this case around 50 ms. Okay for playback.

I'll try it with an ASIO device shortly but I expect no problems.

JohnG.