Sun May 12, 2024 11:35 pm
So recently I've been tinkering with some more LMMS instrument plugins. And I'm slowly starting to get the hang of them. However there's one plugin that really annoyed me quite a bit, that being SF2 Player. The reason, well.... it doesn't have ADSR Envelope.
From there I decided to look around for some solutions. And the solutions that I got were not very great. Essentially by either using workarounds like connecting its volume signal to an instrument that has ADSR (i.e. Triple Oscillator), using Reverb effect, or extracting the SF2 file to get the audio tracks to use as audio samples. I've tried them, and they didn't really do the job that well, so eventually I just gave up.
Then I came across 'DSK', and they have this thing called 'DSK SF2'. It is essentially a free VST that plays SF2. So I decided to give that one a shot, and it straight-up worked like a charm! It has an ADSR Envelope feature, and they worked perfectly. (or at least Far Better than what LMMS' SF2 has to offer)
But then I'm starting to notice something else. They both emulate the SF2 sounds Really Differently. And by that I mean the sounds that LMMS' SF2 Player plays are sounded more... muffled (or sort of dampened), compared to DSK SF2 that gives much clearer sound.
So just to make sure, I went ahead and compare both sounds to the actual sampler that the SF2 file used (from the SF2 file extraction I did earlier). And it turns out, the original sound exactly matched the ones that came from DSK SF2.
(and yes, I've tried both plugins straight up from scratch. Just add them into Song Editor and load the SF2 file into them straight away, no dials turned or switch changed at all. Still gives the same result.)
So, two things that I can conclude from this. One, I might be starting to use that VST forward for playing SF2 Files, or until ADSR is implemented into LMMS' SF2 Player (which from what I can tell, not possible or might not going to happen. So that'll be for a long while.)
And two, most importantly. Is the muffled sound from LMMS' SF2 Player an intentional one, or is it a bug? (I'm using the most recent Nightly build as of now; 1.3.0-alpha.1592+gacdf05f34)
.....and my apologies for the ramblings, but this SF2 bit almost got me losing my mind for about 2-3 days straight.... >-<v
Edit: After that discovery earlier, I searched around for other SF2 Player VST that I can get hold of (of course that means just the free ones). And found another one (and only one... .-.) called 'SFSynth2' by EFM. Tested that one and worked just as well. It has the ADSR feature similar to 'DSK SF2', and seems to have a bit more features compared to that. But I think any of the two should be more than enough to do the job.
From there I decided to look around for some solutions. And the solutions that I got were not very great. Essentially by either using workarounds like connecting its volume signal to an instrument that has ADSR (i.e. Triple Oscillator), using Reverb effect, or extracting the SF2 file to get the audio tracks to use as audio samples. I've tried them, and they didn't really do the job that well, so eventually I just gave up.
Then I came across 'DSK', and they have this thing called 'DSK SF2'. It is essentially a free VST that plays SF2. So I decided to give that one a shot, and it straight-up worked like a charm! It has an ADSR Envelope feature, and they worked perfectly. (or at least Far Better than what LMMS' SF2 has to offer)
But then I'm starting to notice something else. They both emulate the SF2 sounds Really Differently. And by that I mean the sounds that LMMS' SF2 Player plays are sounded more... muffled (or sort of dampened), compared to DSK SF2 that gives much clearer sound.
So just to make sure, I went ahead and compare both sounds to the actual sampler that the SF2 file used (from the SF2 file extraction I did earlier). And it turns out, the original sound exactly matched the ones that came from DSK SF2.
(and yes, I've tried both plugins straight up from scratch. Just add them into Song Editor and load the SF2 file into them straight away, no dials turned or switch changed at all. Still gives the same result.)
So, two things that I can conclude from this. One, I might be starting to use that VST forward for playing SF2 Files, or until ADSR is implemented into LMMS' SF2 Player (which from what I can tell, not possible or might not going to happen. So that'll be for a long while.)
And two, most importantly. Is the muffled sound from LMMS' SF2 Player an intentional one, or is it a bug? (I'm using the most recent Nightly build as of now; 1.3.0-alpha.1592+gacdf05f34)
.....and my apologies for the ramblings, but this SF2 bit almost got me losing my mind for about 2-3 days straight.... >-<v
Edit: After that discovery earlier, I searched around for other SF2 Player VST that I can get hold of (of course that means just the free ones). And found another one (and only one... .-.) called 'SFSynth2' by EFM. Tested that one and worked just as well. It has the ADSR feature similar to 'DSK SF2', and seems to have a bit more features compared to that. But I think any of the two should be more than enough to do the job.
