WAV file handling format

bManic · 28 Feb 2005

I can see the benefits of supporting AKAI but personally I'd rather see SynthMaker support .SFZ format. It's elegant, pretty easy to work with and the it's free and supported by the developer/inventor. For more info, go to: http://www.rgcaudio.com/sfzformat.htm

Cheers! bManic

PhattRaid · 28 Feb 2005

Good post, appreciate the specification link, sfz looks alright. How does developer support apply when the guy now works for Cakewalk?

A strength of the format is support for any common bit depth, eight to thirty two, and sample rates from 44.1K up past 192K.

Too many parameters for the development team to map in correctly perhaps?

The question is: is there just a little sfz player module within SynthMaker?

For sampling synthesis hybrid creations, I'm thinking one can use the collection of samples alot like an oscillator.

The difference is the need to set parm specific zones in SynthMaker, to hide key and velocity splits in the samples.

SFZ as a format is alright with me, as long as I can get my samples into the VST.

Consider also a drum vsti with samples built in. One note plays only pure synthetic drum, another note is a sample. Perhaps one note is a mix of the two.

The most popular Roland TR beat box used both analog circuits and wavetable samples. Lots of hardware modules and keyboards mix digital synthesis and samples.

lalo · 1 Mar 2005

hi! i voted any..cause a lot of inter-format conversion tools exists.. like the optimal and cheap extreme sample converter... i agree that a multi-sample format will be very useful when sampler developing primitives will be ready in SM... i guess will see the beginning of it with a kind of wav buffer, maybe with an audio input too for live sampling...and as jorge said sometime ago a kind of code-module based way to deal with the buffer itself. we'll se 🙂

lalo

esden9 · 1 Mar 2005

Voted for "other"

I'd like to see a powerful sampling engine with higher level capability than normal samplers. for example, I'd like to see full, independant control time and pitch and formant much like the Variphrase series of roland synths. As many sample formats as possible should be supported for import, but the sampling engine itself should be capable of more. Just being able to play back samples in different formats is not enough in todays world.

lalo · 1 Mar 2005

esden9 wrote: Voted for "other"

I'd like to see a powerful sampling engine with higher level capability than normal samplers. for example, I'd like to see full, independant control time and pitch and formant much like the Variphrase series of roland synths. As many sample formats as possible should be supported for import, but the sampling engine itself should be capable of more. Just being able to play back samples in different formats is not enough in todays world.

hi esden9! i think the great thing about SM is its 'low-level' approach...so instead of a 'full featured sample engine' i think we'll have in future some primitives components to do stuff on audio buffers...including FFT/iFFT stuff, pitch recognition stuff, beat recognition stuff, phase vocoding based stuff etc... combining all those with some DSP knowledge many 'sampler engine' will emerge..you 'll can do it yourself or just use some 'ready made' hi level modules done by other who shares their work. this path will evolve in time..i think we'll see a lot of interesting stuff in the next months 🙂 lalo

tedburt · 1 Mar 2005

Not soundfonts for god's sake. If you implement soundfonts, nooone will take synthmaker seriously as a piece of professional dsp software! Need akai & raw wav formats.

jorge · 2 Mar 2005

tedburt wrote: Not soundfonts for god's sake. If you implement soundfonts, nooone will take synthmaker seriously as a piece of professional dsp software! Need akai & raw wav formats.

I dont know much about soundfonts, I need to do some googling. My impression was exactly what tedburt just said but I wasnt sure, I'm a bit more sure now.

mindplay · 2 Mar 2005

I voted SF2.

You can't possibly support all the features supported by an AKAI sampler anyways - you probably can't even support all of the SF2 features, but at least you can probably support most of those.

Although I agree, the available AKAI sound libraries are generally of considerably higher quality than available SF2 libraries, I also think SoundFont editors are more readily available for PCs - not even sure there are any AKAI editors?

Also, AKAI file formats are proprietary and closed, as far as I know?

Finally, as someone else pointed out, you can always convert between formats if it comes to that...

lalo · 2 Mar 2005

mindplay wrote: I voted SF2.

You can't possibly support all the features supported by an AKAI sampler anyways - you probably can't even support all of the SF2 features, but at least you can probably support most of those.

Although I agree, the available AKAI sound libraries are generally of considerably higher quality than available SF2 libraries, I also think SoundFont editors are more readily available for PCs - not even sure there are any AKAI editors?

Also, AKAI file formats are proprietary and closed, as far as I know?

Finally, as someone else pointed out, you can always convert between formats if it comes to that...

yes....the quality is just a matter of the actual samples than the format.. obviously SF is somewhat limited in filtering/envelope properties of the sample program... but once we have a way to play multisamples (keyzones / velocity layers) we'll use the SM DSP modules for the rest (filtering / envelopes etc.. etc...)

lalo

NothanUmber · 2 Mar 2005

I'm not sure if AKAI, SF2 etc. are sufficient for the expectations of sampler users of the not too far future. (Scriptability, new approaches to mix physical modelling or additive synthesis techniques with traditional sampling etc.) So I'd vote for a generic file I/O and scanner/parser component 🙂 From the already mentioned "classic" formats perhaps sfz is a nice choice as there is a free editor available ( http://audio.clockbeat.com/sfZed.html ) that imports Soundfonts, so one has the advantage of many free samplesets combined with a straightforward (and extendable...) fileformat. (And as already mentioned sfz is a target for the affordable extreme sample converter that covers gig2/3,akai,kontakt...)

Greetings, NothanUmber

acousmod · 7 Mar 2005

for me, without any doubt, "other" which means wave_extensible format...

That's now some years that the multichannel files formats are used by a few hosts (and Podium is here the best of all), but it is always hard to make an instrument that can use them. So, it would be wonderful if Synthmaker will make this finally possible !

Thanks.