Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
A new free NY Steinway Model B (new v5.2)
There is a lovely NY S&S Model B that has been sampled by Dore Mark. The full Kontakt version is available on the Pianobook site but Dore has given me permission to make a SoundFont sf2 version available that plays very nicely on the bs-16i app or with the Soundfonts app. The sf2 version has 7 velocity layers and is 237mb in size.
You can download the sf2 either from my site https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
or directly from my Google Drive (updated May 12 for latest version v5.2) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nvTy62-wHGnZ6CKYuPNAiGlKLtWg9Ir9/view?usp=sharing
Hope you like it!
(Edit: A four piano set for iOS devices with 3gb or more of ram is now available)
For bs-16i use
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UpggAFKqgrcjWweZJNAQspuT9zo-hotJ/view?usp=sharing
For Sondfonts app B-Ray Software use
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Io7WkKsIvFzZI0xymW0MWh-2JxQmUbpX/view?usp=share_link
see post further down dated May 9 for details)
Comments
Awesome thanks for sharing!
Very nice of you to do this and share.
A short demo of the sound using a midi file from the old Purgatory Creek Piano shootout
https://on.soundcloud.com/yxT9p
I love your free Pianos SF2’s. They work great in KQ Sampei too. Very solid sf2 engine.
Wow, thanks!
Thanks for this! Loaded it into Bismarck and it sounds great!
Gonna try it in a couple other soundfont players later tonight.
Does KQs offer anything over bs-16? It’s been my go to for a long time now. I also have the Taqsim one but I haven’t tried uploading anything to it yet.
Big overlap in functionality. I think I prefer the user interface in KQ Sampei.
I figured as much. Probably not worth getting for me huh? I love all their other apps though!
Sounds great! Thanks for your work with this :-)
Mark Dore’s contributions are really impressive. They are pretty compact too.
I've improved the velocity curve on the Steinway Model B in the latest update here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11HPlPb8aAFnCmXgJxe9aHYD_Wuc437ii/view?usp=sharing
(Also now updated in the first post above)
Thanks Reuben for the great sounding Steinway Model B soundfont. It is very playable and I enjoy it! One thing that is stopping me from using it prominently in my live setup is the following. When you hold notes for a long time then after approx. 6-7 seconds you can hear what I think is the loop point kicking in. Looping is required to achieve the longer sustained notes but the way it is done here is giving a phasy unnatural effect. Is there a way to balance this out better with some soundfont config settings?
That little shrill resonance you are hearing on some notes are part of the original long samples and Steinways have a habit of resonating like this long after striking the key. It was much more noticeable on the higher notes so I in fact looped them before the resonance on these so that didn't happen but I decided to leave them in for the lower notes. You do have me thinking however that I might put out a version that does away with them all - watch this space!
Dang… I just realized that you said it’s your site! I can’t thank you enough for hosting that site, I’ve used it awhile ago and still do to keep my SoundFonts app full of your great stuff. Thank you. Cheers!
100%, Thank you Ruben for finding these sampled instruments and packaging them up with care for our consumption.
Of course, there are often samplists like Mark Dore for example that make the recordings but you always give them the credit and bring their efforts to a much larger audience.
There’s a great collection of apps now on IOS that can import your SF2 products… KQ Sampei, iSoundfonts, 4 Pockets “Progressions” (I just learned this today), Auria Pro and the long standing champ: BS-16i. I’m sure there are few more.
Thanks for your response Reuben. Interesting to hear. I know that these kind of resonances can happen but I find them really prominent in this sampleset. Might be that the sampling mic position has emphasized these. In my Yamaha C6 grand this phenomenon is barely audible. But if you find a way to exclude these without a big trade off in other areas that would be great! Please keep us posted.
I've now updated the Steinway to eliminate the resonace repeats and also reduced the file size down to 240 mb. Thank you Jaykay81 for the suggestions - I'm really happy with how this worked out. And thanks Poppadocrock and McD for the positive comments.
Download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aVFLUzpxp07KYDqDtJDp95XeEQ4eR5Hy/view?usp=sharing
or from my site https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
Ive been using this quite a bit. Thanks for the work you’ve been putting in!
🙏
Your efforts are much appreciated Reuben. The resonance in the long decay is much better now. Some small quirk that caught my attention after a first play -> the following top notes have a looping point that is starting too early and because of this it includes a part of the transient which sounds like a second note is being triggered while sustaining -> F7, F#7, G7, B7, C8
Beautiful piano sound. Thank you!
Another thing that caught my ear is that this F7, F#7 and G7 seem to be a bit off pitch. It gets less for the higher notes after these (G#7 -> B7). When you play these in an octave interval as the top note (so for example F6 and F7 together) then you can hear it quite well. Is there something you can do to fix this Reuben?
This highlights one thing I don’t like about the SF2 format… the individual samples are embedded in the file and it requires a desktop app like Polyphony to get access to them for fine pitch adjustments. I suspect @Reuben uses this app to create his SF2 releases.
But the simplicity of SF2 is wonderful. I have a lot of problems getting SFZ instruments to load properly but when they do they extra features SF2 does not attempt like “on release” samples for example.
For competition, the Decent Sampler format is getting better and better: it exposes a folder of samples (but also seems to have a mechanism for IP protection of the samples for vendors) and it allows declarations of release samples too. I’ve been getting hundreds of useful instruments from PianoBook.co.uk in the Decent Sampler format. That site has rapidly shifted from every sample being in the proprietary (i.e. must purchase the player) Kontakt format to Decent Sampler formats. Hopefully more sample playback apps start to support this format too.
Yeah I had to take a break from PianoBook for a bit because I was eating up my iPad memory with all the great sample sets on there. And I didn’t even download 1/10 of what I wanted haha 😅 so until I upgrade, I gotta take it easy.
Thanks again for your comments. I agree a few notes need some working on and it looks like I'll need to do some more in-depth editing - perhaps with Audacity. The problem is the late resonance that happens on a few notes leads to a trade-off - if I loop after the resonance it will still be there, or loop before it while the timbre change is still obvious then the sample is a bit short in length and the loop stands out too much. I think the answer will be to reduce the volume of the resonance and loop after it. Give me a few days! In the meantime enjoy.
OK it was a lot easier to fix than I thought. Looping points on the very high F7 etc fixed. Tuning on F7, F#7, G7 found to be out about 20cents in the sample so this has now been fixed. This has turned out to be a bit of a community project so apart from the credit the sampler Dore Mark rightly deserves thanks to Jaykay81 and others for pointing out some areas that could be improved. This is now a great piano - enjoy!
You can download v5.1 from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e-zP6QvivlDpyIM5LS4NQ7S_2gwCzH0P/view?usp=sharing
or go to my site https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
Wow you’re really putting in the work here. Thanks! I think this is gonna become one of my go-to piano sounds now.
For those fortunate enough to have a more recent iOS device (3gb of Ram or more) I now packaged up four of the best free pianos here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UpggAFKqgrcjWweZJNAQspuT9zo-hotJ/view?usp=sharing
Also downloadable from my site and is called "Piano Collection-SF4U" https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
I've tested these and they load and run without a hitch on an iPhone 13 using the bismark bs-16i app. At this stage I cannot vouch for other apps or smaller Ram devices but would love to hear your reports of any issues or successes.
The set contains the latest S&S sampled by Dore Mark, a revised version of the Yamaha C5 salmander grand plus two other pianos and is 896mb in size.
I'm noob in that domain. Is KQ Sampei the best and cheapest option on iOS to read sf2 files?
I am pretty sure that the cheapest and simplest is "SoundFonts" by B-Ray Software.