[iiwusynth-devel] RE: Hi - Very quiet list - my first post

[Josh Green]

On Mon, 2003-01-20 at 13:42, Mark Knecht wrote:
> Josh,
>    Hi. I'm not much of a fluid-synth user yet, but I'll outline the things I
> think I look to battery for:
> 
> 1) An up front GUI that's pretty easy to see and understand (important for
> us 'command-line challenged' types!)

Thats basically what Swami is (and much more really, its an entire API
framework for manipulating patch formats, with a GUI as one of the
interfaces).. It has a FluidSynth plugin to use it as its wavetable
synth engine (currently the only supported one, but I will be adding a
hardware EMU8k/10k plugin in the future). Of course Swami still needs a
bit of work to make it the best patch editor in the world :)

> 2) Uses 16 & 24-bit wave files easily

Swami currently only supports SoundFont files (I'm just now adding DLS2
support). SoundFont uses 16 bit data only, DLS2 officially only supports
8 or 16 bit data, but the format could in theory accomodate 24 bit or
other formats. They just wouldn't be portable (DLS2 does have support
for conditional proprietary stuff).

> 3) Assigns specific samples to both specific MIDI notes AND channels. Has
> tuning, ADSR envelope plus limited plug in support for each note.

Yes to everything.. Except that MIDI channel mapping is usually done by
selecting Bank:Preset pairs which are specific instruments or banks of
drums (not built into the format). Drums are traditionally only on MIDI
channel 10, although SoundFont does not restrict this. Plugin support
for each note? Not sure what you mean by that, but FluidSynth does have
a LADSPA host for adding LADSPA plugins to the synthesis output (no GUI
support for this yet though).

> 4) Velocity support - maps velocity to different samples. (VERY important
> for using .gig files. Not typical of sound font based tools.)

Yes.. Swami has this already. Each zone can have its own velocity range
which causes the sound to play, can also layer velocity/key range zones.

> 5) Easy to mix samples from different sets to make a new set.
> 

Swami can open multiple patch files and easily copy samples/instruments
between them, if this is what you mean.

>    I would really be happy if Swami might start by reading .gig files and
> allowing me to export things like a kick from one set and a snare from
> another, save them and load them in a Battery like tool.
> 

I don't know much about .gig files, but I heard someone mention they are
based on DLS2. If this is the case it might be easy to add support for
them after DLS2 support is finished.

>    I hope this gives you some ideas.

Sure.. A lot of this is already available though.. Have you tried
Swami/FluidSynth? The current CVS is GTK1.2 based and works with
FluidSynth CVS (at least last time I checked). Development is currently
happening on the CVS swami-1-0 branch, but it isn't operational quite
yet.

> 
> Cheers,
> Mark
> 

Cheers.
        Josh Green