Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

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Black_Fox
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Black_Fox »

I'm interested... what audible improvements does 96KHz brings over 44.1/48 KHz?
Nintendo Maniac 64
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Nintendo Maniac 64 »

In simple terms, having more Hz should give more clarity and higher bits gives better dynamics.

On standard run-of-the-mill speakers and headphones you may not hear a difference, not to mention your soundcard would have to support it as well. So you'll need a decent to good sound setup to notice the difference. Even if you think you can't hear a difference, there's not any good reason to not use the higher quality since it's not like an audio recording where you'd have a larger filesize.
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Black_Fox
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Black_Fox »

This is what I know so far: Humans can hear up to +/- 20KHz, but there is some reason to double this for audio output, here are 44,1/48 KHz. But who can (even theoretically) enjoy 96KHz output? My dog? (j/k) :) Or do I know something in a wrong way?
Nintendo Maniac 64
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Nintendo Maniac 64 »

This is a common mistake, these are actually two different things. What I describe is sample rate; what you describe about 20khz and your dog is the audio frequency.

Sample rate is merely how many chunks (or samples) of sound play within each second. Audio frequency simply put is pretty much just the pitch of the audio.
fLuXx
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by fLuXx »

Actually, according to sampling theory, in order to be able to properly reconstruct the sampled signal (audio in our case), the frequency of sampling needs to be at least double of the highest frequency in spectrum, in our case 20Khz. Because audio standard was once set, in current use are 44.1Khz and 48Khz (which is a little bit more than double). Anything higher than that is actually quite unnecessary and is kind of an overkill. You can't hear any difference in quality at all. A lot more important is the bits per sample factor. Of course, a human cannot really tell the difference between 16-bits and 24-bits, but it is significant if the signal is being edited digitally (in audio production for ex.), since it's being less distorted.

Now, on topic, I would like the soundfont feature installed eventually, but I wouldn't make it a priority. I've used timidity++ on my old machine, and it used too much resources and slowed down my computer. Since I see reactos as a minimal OS, I don't think such a software should ever be included, but a possibility of installing would, of course, be great.

BTW, this is my first post (and, hopefully, not the last one), so I just want to hi!
Haos
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Haos »

Still, including even 1mb bank to bootcd (not even mentioning anything bigger) is a no-go.
Angelus
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Angelus »

Maybe this kind of software could be listed in a Download! utility folder called "Drivers" from where you can download and install if you need them. A lot of people will not use midi or audio sequencers so they would not need SF support. Personally, I'll love to have this capability available.
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Nintendo Maniac 64 »

fLuXx wrote:Actually, according to sampling theory, in order to be able to properly reconstruct the sampled signal (audio in our case), the frequency of sampling needs to be at least double of the highest frequency in spectrum, in our case 20Khz. Because audio standard was once set, in current use are 44.1Khz and 48Khz (which is a little bit more than double). Anything higher than that is actually quite unnecessary and is kind of an overkill. You can't hear any difference in quality at all. A lot more important is the bits per sample factor. Of course, a human cannot really tell the difference between 16-bits and 24-bits, but it is significant if the signal is being edited digitally (in audio production for ex.), since it's being less distorted.
I'm sorry but I cannot agree with you. While I cannot prove it, I've seen many discussions among audiophiles that CAN hear the difference for bitdepth and samplerate on their sound setups. The 20hz frequency is barely related to the resulting samplerate if at all.
fred02
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by fred02 »

Angelus wrote:Maybe this kind of software could be listed in a Download! utility folder called "Drivers" from where you can download and install if you need them. A lot of people will not use midi or audio sequencers so they would not need SF support. Personally, I'll love to have this capability available.
I second that.
Nintendo Maniac 64 wrote:
fLuXx wrote:Actually, according to sampling theory, in order to be able to properly reconstruct the sampled signal (audio in our case), the frequency of sampling needs to be at least double of the highest frequency in spectrum, in our case 20Khz. Because audio standard was once set, in current use are 44.1Khz and 48Khz (which is a little bit more than double). Anything higher than that is actually quite unnecessary and is kind of an overkill. You can't hear any difference in quality at all. A lot more important is the bits per sample factor. Of course, a human cannot really tell the difference between 16-bits and 24-bits, but it is significant if the signal is being edited digitally (in audio production for ex.), since it's being less distorted.
I'm sorry but I cannot agree with you. While I cannot prove it, I've seen many discussions among audiophiles that CAN hear the difference for bitdepth and samplerate on their sound setups. The 20hz frequency is barely related to the resulting samplerate if at all.
Wikipedia seems to summarise the topic quite nicely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_% ... pling_rate
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Black_Fox
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Black_Fox »

OK, thanks for the explanations guys. BTW, welcome to the forums, fLuXx!
Nintendo Maniac 64 wrote:I've seen many discussions among audiophiles that CAN hear the difference for bitdepth and samplerate on their sound setups
If they still can even after blind ABX testing, then OK (and respect).
Pharaoh_Atem
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Pharaoh_Atem »

I made a wiki page about MIDI in ReactOS.

Anyone who has more information regarding this topic should contribute.
fLuXx
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by fLuXx »

Nintendo Maniac 64 wrote:
I'm sorry but I cannot agree with you. While I cannot prove it, I've seen many discussions among audiophiles that CAN hear the difference for bitdepth and samplerate on their sound setups. The 20hz frequency is barely related to the resulting samplerate if at all.
I'm only saying there's no theoretical advantage to oversampling. There is no actual proof of there being any benefit at all. As for practice, well I can't even tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and wave, so I certainly can't notice anything even more sophisticated, but I don't think anyone else can, at least in theory. In fact, the only benefit from oversampling is bigger freedom with making output low pass filter, which can be made more loosely. And, yes, the 20Khz is related to sampling rate (at least according to Nyquist-Shannon theorem). As for audiophiles, well, they're certainly a strange group of people. I've heard many nonsense things from some of them. I see them at least as overenthusiastic people.
Nintendo Maniac 64
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Nintendo Maniac 64 »

Well, just today I was playing around with my sister's laptop that has a soundcard that supports 96KHz 24bit audio, and I was doing a blind A-B test with myself comparing 96KHz 24bit to 48KHz 16bit. Needless to say, even on my cheepo ~$10 earbuds, at times I actually could JUST barely hear a VERY TINY difference - now imagine if I had brought my decent over-ear headphones or hooked it up to my father's expensive sound system!

And FWIW, I do consider myself an audiophile and I can definitely tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and CD quality, even on a crappy intergrated AC'97 soundcard (though is harder to tell obviously).

Remember, songs that are victims of the loudness war aren't very good for quality comparisons. Songs that aren't part of "the music industry" like video game music usually don't participate in the loudness war (they have no real reason to) and will usually have better-sounding audio quality. It's the same reason why Metallica's "Death Magnetic" sounded better with the Guitar Hero version than the official music CD.
greenie
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by greenie »

Depends what your listening to. Lower frequencies depends less on sample rate.
Mp3's are a bad comparison because they are a lossy format. What you put in you wont get back out anyway.

The loudness war seems a bit over done really. Ideally you want to use as much of the resolution as you can to produce quality. It's no use having a huge depth then using 100 values. The waveforms produced by Metallica are going to appear loud anyway. It's the style of music. Distortion is increasing volume beyond the clipping zone. Overdrive is similar. I mean Metallica could play it with no effects but then it's not metallic. Saying they could make it quieter would simply reduce the quality.

You can amplify a track until it hits its max amplitude then your track will get destortion. There is another way using compression but then that results to the equivalent of overdrive if used too much.
There is only so much you can do and it's only there fault if lullaby sounds like def metal.
Nintendo Maniac 64
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Re: Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

Post by Nintendo Maniac 64 »

Um... you do realize that for "Death Magnetic" the reason the Guitar Hero version sounded better was because it used barely any to no dynamic range compression, while the one on the CD was clipped and compressed dynamics-wise to a distance longer than over 9000 longcats?

And I realize MP3 isn't that great, which is why if I cannot use lossless I use OGG vorbis.


Also, we're really starting to get off-topic here... this is meant to be about MIDI in ReactOS, not sound quality in general.
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