re: Soundfont Woes

[MrSong]

OK folks with brains- I need your assistance- or any that you are willing to spare!

Here's the list of what matters:

Cakewalk Sonar
SBlaster Live (with Live Drive)
Vienna Soundfont Thingamajig
close to 500 MB Ram
Pentium III 550
MIDI Keyboard

OK- I understand MIDI- indeed, I've been using it for a long, long time. I bought Sonar from a friend but along with the cheap price came no manual. I've read many, many threads on the soundfonts issues.

I've been able to:

Create a soundfont2 file using Vienna (no memory errors) and save it to HD.

I've even been able to install the soundfont into Sonar but I'm only hearing GM sounds... whether I use my keyboard or not.

Look here:
http://www.triplogy.com/mygosh.htm

I've took several screen shots (the page is no more than 150K with the images, I swear) that allow you to see what I doing.

If anyone sees my screw-ups, please-o-please show me the errors of my ways!

Thanks Guys!

[A1MixMan]

From what I can tell, I would set the input channel to Midi Omni (which just means any channel).
The output looks good.
Channel to 1 (or whatever channel you are using).
Try setting your Bank Select Method to Controller 0, or one of the other options. I think this might be the problem.
The bank looks good.
Select the patch you want.
Remember each soundfont can have 128 banks and each bank can have 128 patches. You can select the patch # when creating a soundfont in Vienna.
Key+ and Time+ leave alone.

From my experience, you don't need to set the soundfont location tab.

Have you downloaded a soundfont from the web and tried it instead?
Maybe your created soundfont is corrupted.
Be sure to have you soundfont cache set to the highest amount (around 250mb in your case) This won't hurt your computers performance. It just sets a ceiling for how many soundfonts you can load into ram, it only uses the ram if soundfonts are loaded.

Hope this helps,
If not, post back here.

A1MixMan

P.S.
I would get this book RIGHT NOW!
It's better than the Sonar Manual.
Trust me on this one.
http://www.garrigus.com/scott/work/sonarpower.html

P.S.S. Very cool idea on the website with the Sonar images.
It really helped me understand what your doing.

[AlChuck]

The name chadskit is suggestive - is this a drum Sound Font? Is it set up as a General MIDI Sound Font? If yes, you would have to choose patch "None" and use Channel 10. If no, you would use any channel but you would have to select an explicit patch.

[MrSong]

Thanks both of you guys. Wow- I had the Channel wrong. It is still somewhat quirky- for unknown reasons- meaning that Sonar still needs some tweaking. But, once it starts working it's awesome. I actually read the posts here about 7-8 hours ago but I'm just now getting around to saying the 'thank you's' because of working on a new tune tonight.

Peace.
Chad Austin

http://www.thelogicmusic.com