Sound Fonts

[Milkman]

Hi All,

I have just figured out how to use sound fonts, and they are mighty cool. A few questions. Can I assign different sound fonts to different tracks?...I tried to do this, but after loading one sound font, it said there was not enough memory to load anymore. I have 512 mgs of Ram and a P3 1 GHZ so I thought that it may be more of a hard drive related problem???

Also, until I get some nice full sounding monitors, I want to listen to the midi (playback and recording) out of my keyboard speakers. They are much nicer sounding, and have a fuller sound. My comp speakers have a really shallow sound to them for MIDI, and I hate listening to it. However, is it possible to specify for the MIDI to play through the sound font but out of the keyboard speakers? Any help would be appreciated.

Milkman

 

[brzilian]

You'll need to be more specific about your hardware. All Soundblaster cards can use up to half of your system's RAM for soundfont storage. It has nothing to do with your HD

To access multipe sounds, you need to create a new soundfont bank of sounds that you want to use.

Regarding the speaker thing, the answer is no. MIDI is not audio data, it is just a computer communications protocol with bunch of instructions that tell your equipment what notes and sounds to play ,etc.

The only way to use your keyboard speakers would be if your keyboad had a line-in jack like your soundcard.

FYI, the term MIDI is greatly misunderstood and misused. It stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is basically the same thing as a computer's serial port.

 

[Milkman]

Sorry, forgot to tell you my specs.

PIII 1 GHZ
Maxtor ata/100 7200 RPM 40GIG
512mgs of SDRAM
asus something rather
SB Live Platinum 5.1
win xp pro
etc.

The weird thing about playing out of the speakers is that I can play and record regular MIDI out of my keyboard speakers (using the MIDI UART as port and source). But when I add a sound font, i have to listen to it out of my comp speakers. Thanks.

Milkman

 

[A1MixMan]

soundfonts

Not all Soundblaster cards can use half of your system memory for soundfonts, only the newer cards like the Live series.
Awe 64, Awe 32 use memory built onto the card.
With your SB Live card software you should have a control panel that will allow you to set the amount of RAM that Soundfonts can access.
I would set this slider to the all the way to 255 megs ram.
This does not take up the Ram, it is still available for your computer. But you can now load up to that amount with soundfonts.

Also, in Sonar or Pro Audio, you can load soundfonts from there and put whatever ones you want into memory. This way you can use more than one soundfont at a time. (Up to the max ram you specified in the SoundBlaster control panel).
Just select a different bank for each one.

Regarding your speakers, If you play your keyboard, and record the midi with Sonar what is happening is this:
The keyboard is generating the sounds and sending this out of the keyboard speakers. The keyboard is also generating the midi data, and sending this to Sonar, which is then recording it as midi data, not audio.
You can then assign a soundfont to play the midi data in Sonar to play back out of your computer speakers through your Soundblaster Live card. Now you will hear this as audio. Like brzilian said, if your keyboard has a line in jack then you can route the audio from the soundcard to the keyboards speakers.

Hope this helps, and by the way, I have attached a zip file of all my soundfont links from my favorites folder in IE.
Just put the unzipped folder (SoundFonts) in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Favorites folder. (or change All Users to whatever you use) and you can see them from IE/Favorites

Good Luck and keep on making music!

A1MixMan

 

[Paul881]

Hi there A1MixMan, hows the XP upgrade going? I thought about you on Oct 25th!

Question: I am a guitarist, newly intoduced to the wonders of Soundfonts, like Milkman. I am going to get a MIDI controller from Santa but want to know about key sensitivity.

If I want to play slow Credenza strings, but I want them to proportionally fade out when I slowly lift my finger from the keyboard, will the keyboard/MIDI instruction set respond accordingly? I am looking to get a Roland MIDI Controller but the Evolution looks good too.

 

[MASTON]

Hey PAUL 881,

I would really like to know how u do this too. I'm using a generic midi controller. Anyway, can u let us know if u find anything out. I did a search but came up with nothing.

cheers
Maston