Sf2 & MID: Please tell me that I'm not in a musicians hell

[borla]

I used to love LMMS and spent the last six month with converting 70 old Atari/Notator Tracks to LMMS and working them out with it. I knew that there is a mean Bug with the Piano Roll-On Grid (simply try to do a 5/4 Track to see what I mean). I could live with that, although a lot of my songs are not in 4/4. - But now I've found two really heavy things, which combined give me this "trapped in a one way hell" feeling:

I used to work a lot with Sf2 soundfonts like EMUs +symphony.sf2 (8 MB) and discovered that they often sound dull, like 8 bit mono samples or so. They loose their brilliance and I cannot find out why. I found this under Linux-LMMS using ALSA or Jack and under Windows7-LMMS using SDL (using the notebooks soundchip, no soundblaster card).
Under Windows 7 I also had this problem with Presonus' Studio2 (so it's probably not LMMS specific).
I tried the bassmidi driver, to get rid of the windows midi system, without success. - But: the problem doesn't appear when using Synthfont, or checking the soundfonts with Viena 0.950 (all root keys are set correctly). The Sf2s sound bright and brilliant with Synthfont or Viena, even on low velocity. It seems, these programs somehow have an other and more adequate way of working with Sf2s. So it seems, that the soundproblem does not depend on the Sf2 bank nor the windows midi system, but on the DAW that uses them to communicate with the hardware

Because I doubt that there is a simple solution, I tried to export my tracks to MID. I don't know why, but you can not do this with LMMS (this is LMMS specific)! And this gives me the feeling that I'm caught in a trap. I tried to escape by connecting LMMS MidiOut and Reaper MidiIn via LoopBe1, doing a new midi recording. I could save the notes this way, but not the single note's volume So each note has to be corrected again!

I think there could be three ways out of this dilemma

1. I do not understand the LMMS Sf2player nor Sf2 nor the LMMS Soundsystem at all, but you do and write down the solution here or do a youtube movie. - Even if the solution means "For best Sf2 results use a Soundblaster Live! soundcard with Windows XP" this would be phantastic!

2. I didn't try Midi Yoke (instead of LoopBe1). Maybe this is capable to do a perfect midirecording LMMS -> MidiYoke -> Reaper. Maybe Jack also is capable to route LMMS MidiOut to Reaper MidiIn.

3. There will be LMMS 1.0 with a working piano roll-on grid, perfect Sf2 sound and mid export or just a small MMPZ2MID converter that works, within the next five months (how I wish I could program tools like that... ).

would like to continue to love and use LMMS...
thank you in advance,
borla

[Sti-Jay]

Well, some folks think that after exporting their songs are not so bright or alive as in the production. So they basically turn up the high frequencies to fix it. Adding the 10 band equalizer in the FX tab in the SF2 player will let you do this.

[borla]

Thanks for your reply. I've tried it and it doesn't work. It's like turning the tone knob of a guitar down and than adjusting the treble knob of the amplifier to get more brilliance.

But since I've worked out the "export" of my lmms tracks via LoopBe1, the solution of this problem is not so important to me any longer... and, well, I hate it to say, but lmms isn't relevant for me any longer. I like its concept and I'm so familiar with it's gui, that I maybe continue to compose with it. Some kind of beloved torture, or so For musicians, who sometimes have a bit more complex rhythms like 4/4, use Sf2 and like to have mid files, this program is not useful.

To re-record my lmms tracks via LoopBe1 and a midi recording program and working it out with Synthfont Player, isn't a very smart solution, but it works. If I could program, I would spend lmms a mid export or at least a tool like a mmpz2mid. Is it complicated to program such thing?! I hope not. This would make lmms a much better program.

borla

[raekman]

I used to work a lot with Sf2 soundfonts like EMUs +symphony.sf2 (8 MB) and discovered that they often sound dull, like 8 bit mono samples or so. They loose their brilliance and I cannot find out why. I found this under Linux-LMMS using ALSA or Jack and under Windows7-LMMS using SDL (using the notebooks soundchip, no soundblaster card).
Under Windows 7 I also had this problem with Presonus' Studio2 (so it's probably not LMMS specific).
I tried the bassmidi driver, to get rid of the windows midi system, without success.

BassMIDI claims to have "the closest sounding MIDI playback to real E-mu SoundFont hardware available", so maybe the dull sound actually is correct? Looks like there's a parameter in the SF2 standard called "initialFilterFc", defaulting to 13500 Hz. If that is set in your fonts and some programs just ignore it... or it might be unset and the standard interpreted in two different ways.

But I'm only guessing here. The Fluidsynth (on which LMMS' SF2 player is based) developers might have some more to say on this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/fluidsynth/

[borla]

Hi raekman, thanks for your reply. I think you've got it. I also think, that some soundfontplayers ignore the Filtersettings of a Sf like EMUs "+symphony". - The best (by test) Soundfontplayer is the Jeskola XS-1 vst, which allows you to change some Sf-parameters, and playing with the cutoff-Frequency causes the most dramatical effect. Maybe this workaround could make lmms a useful program again for me: Using Vestige + Jeskola XS-1 instead of the builtin Soundfontplayer (which is the worst by test).

[borla]

When saving a LMMS Track as uncompressed MMP (not MMPZ) File, it's just a XML File, which you can edit.
Typical lines for the Soundfontplayer look like this one:

<instrument name="sf2player">
<sf2player patch="0" chorusLevel="2" chorusDepth="8" reverbOn="0" reverbRoomSize="0.2" chorusOn="0" chorusSpeed="0.3" reverbDamping="0" chorusNum="3" reverbLevel="0.9" bank="0" reverbWidth="0.5" src="E:/SF2/Sonatina Orchestra/Strings - Basses Staccato.sf2" gain="1"/>
</instrument>

This is interesting, because it seems to give you the possibility to directly edit the parameters of a soundfont.
The soundfontplayer is based on Fuidsynth, which is known as a powerful soundfont synth, isn't it?
So, if one can change the parameters for reverb and chorus, shouldn't it be possible to also change the parameters for cutoff frequency and resonance (normal integrated soundfont features like reverb and chorus is)?
This...

http://fluidsynth.sourcearchive.com/doc ... ource.html

...looks like as if this is possible.
But cutoff frequency and resonance are not implemented in the LMMS Soundfontplayer GUI.
Nevertheless I would like to try that. Would be phantastic if this works and brings back the brilliance that is lost otherwise.

But how is the syntax in the XML-File of LMMS? Is it like cutoffFrequency="2" resonance="4.5" (which would be nice)?

This could be useful also for Linux' Qsynth, which also just have knobs for reverb and chorus, but not for cutoff frequency and resonance (can someone tell me why?).