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Sound fonts vs .wav or modern libraries ?
Hi
Just wondering what the advantages of SoundFonts are vs wav or libraries compatible with NS2 , BM3 , Cubasis sampler ? Came across a BS16i and soundfonts by b-ray.
Audio quality ? smaller file size ?
Thanks !
Comments
Size would be the biggest factor. The door as been opened wide.
WAV and sound fonts both use uncompressed audio so the size is almost identical.
Sound fonts contain instruments and key mappings so you can play them on a keyboard.
Sound quality is absolutely identical and only depends on your playback app.
WAV files are just samples, they don't contain any instrument information.
@ecou thanks !
Great thanks! @rs2000 so obvious now ... duh 😂 down another rabbit hole I go !
Actually @rs2000 is right and I am wrong. I was thinking of sfark and Sfpack who are the compressed version of soundfont. They are often found online in this format.
SoundFonts are already organized Into playable instruments whereas .wavs Need to be sampled into your app of choice.
Kinda like a Nanostudio 2 obsidian patch is already built and playable, even though it might be built using .wav files
Are there any sound font players on iOS that stream from disk rather than load the whole thing in memory? If not, there is an advantage to using something like AudioLayer which does not load all of the samples into memory and hence can serve up instruments that use a lot of samples (such as the Salamander piano).
Reiterating this, soundfonts often include different samples for different key velocities. For instance, a piano sounds very different played from ppp to fff; it's not just louder. They also use tricks to manage the initial attack vs the sustain phase. With wav files you'd need to organize this yourself. This is important to replicate a certain instrument sound; it may be less significant for a sampler.
ANALOGY TIME: 3 Layers of "Sound Packaging"
A SoundFont is an Envelope, a Container, A Shipping Box, An Enclosure
Wave is the format of the media: postcard, letter paper, poster paper, toilet paper
Hardware vendors will use media types in their specific envelopes
Examples of "Envelopes":
Examples of Media types:
Device Specific Standards:
So, armed with this analogy you might see a WFT in the question re-phrased as:
"When should I use an envelope and when should I use a text message or should I get an iPhone and why can't I buy apps from Google if I do? And will my dick pics be secure?"
These levels of abstraction are further deconstructed in the 7 Networking Layers... but I digress.
you high?
Just seriously bored and a bit sleep deprived. You holding?
The Line - yes.
Toto reference? Great musicians which bad PR.
Porcaro brothers (Joe's boys)
David Paich (Marty's kid)
"Luke"
Seriously bored.
its TOTOTIME @McD !
That grooves are insane.
Ok so next logical question
What are some highly regarded soundfont libraries ?
Yeah
https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
Most are actually pretty old and IMHO not worth the effort but the "Salamander Piano" packages at soundfonts4u are excellent and compete well against the $36 Ravenscroft 275.
Apple's desktop's can export the ESX24 formatted instruments and a few will import well in AudioLayer for example.
SFZ which includes additional metadata for sample actions is really the most robust open format but the implementation details are not universal.
So, I think if you have a passion for this type of instrumentation it's wise to step up to a desktop/laptop and get the higher quality solutions like the Native Instruments Kontakt player formats.
I've been enjoying the instruments that ship with the StaffPad app ($90) but you must
control them by writing out musical scores but the rendering is great and many instruments can be assembled into a "orchestral" ensemble. But it's great for film music but not so good at pop or big band idioms.
There are many sound fonts available at musical-artifacts.org (as I recall) in sf2, sfz and esx24 formats.
No matter what you do you'll find issues and have to decide how much you're willing to invest and with what goals. But I sure wish I had this technology when I was a music major to hear my counterpoint exercises rendered in realtime. You can really hear parallel 5ths as a
weird loss of harmonic integrity when it seems to be hiding in the notes.
The IOS products that provide instruments (iSymphonic, Beathawk, Pure Synth Platinum, etc)
sound great but you can only run a few of the instruments at the same time before you run into problems.
Audition anything you can find in BS-16i, Auria Pro, Audio Layer or SoundFonts AUv3 and see if they pass the "smell test".
https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts?tags=soundfont
Yes. YMMV. I found a couple nice ones there but many are very old when sf2's we're a few MB's in size and designed to load into 1990s hardware units or on a PC audio card like the GUS or the SoundBlaster AWE 32. Good times. MOD files anyone? (SunVox pops up it's sleepy head).
Not a single one that I know of.
The closest match would be the sound font ROMpler in Audio Evolution Mobile:
Although individual presets in a sound font are still loaded into memory completely, at least it's only the chosen preset and not the whole SF2 bank.
They're Excellent. One of my references in terms of composition and sound.
Really? Are you sure? Reference?
I've no reason to doubt you, but since that wasn't my (uninformed) impression, I'd like to try to confirm if possible.
I got the information from Davy Wentzler, the developer of AEM.
He's using the BASS library for sound font playback so if you want to confirm the somewhat confirmed then check out BASS.
Thanks, I'll look into it further. I had the impression from things I read about BS-16i that the whole enchilada was loaded. But I could be totally wrong on that point. It would be a great thing to know for sure.
From BASS v2.4 Synth.c:
case 42: if (HIWORD(w)==CBN_SELCHANGE) { preset=MESS(42,CB_GETCURSEL,0,0); BASS_MIDI_StreamEvent(stream,16,MIDI_EVENT_PROGRAM,preset); // send program/preset event BASS_MIDI_FontCompact(0); // unload unused samples } break;Now if 42 isn't an answer 😅
Edit: AEM is not bs-16i ...
I'm pretty certain at this point it's app dependent. Some PC apps have various options to load all at once for smoother operation but higher memory consumption, or one at a time for limited ram. BS-16i apparently loads all of them because it states that free memory has to be at least the size of the sound font file. There are various mentions of memory constraints on the soundfonts4u site that lead me to believe that too.
The Apple
AVAudioUnitSampler: loadSoundBankInstrument(at:program:bankMSB:bankLSB:)instance method seems like (maybe) it does allow loading of just one instrument, but I could be reading that wrong.I wonder how the Soundfonts app handles it. Hey @BradHowes , you lurking about? Any insights?
42 is the one. In base42 anyway.