Built-in soundfont support for MIDI?

[MadWolf]

hi

There is already timidity driver, but i am not sure if it works. I will give it a try today.
Edit: works flawless in Windows XP, works with custom soundfonts, but stores it's config not in the registry, but .cfg file.

what is the homepage for timidity driver

[Pharaoh_Atem]

hi

There is already timidity driver, but i am not sure if it works. I will give it a try today.
Edit: works flawless in Windows XP, works with custom soundfonts, but stores it's config not in the registry, but .cfg file.

what is the homepage for timidity driver

Hint: look in the wiki.

[greenie]

5-8mb thats not much at all i suppose. I imagine windows JACK might be smaller than that size as well. So we could have windows JACK also.

[vicmarcal]

Well...5Mb is not much if compared with a full CD of Windows XP installation. But our ISOs are 30 MB of size.So adding 5 MB is quite a big amount just for something that maybe isnt going to be used for everybody.
Btw, our ISOs are downloaded aboout 100.000 times in a week, and releases about 180.000 just the first day. Now make the easy calculation: 180.000*5MB and you will understand why each megabyte counts.
If anyone wants to create a DIstro called MIDI-ReactOS, just take our official ISO, add the MIDI sound support(there are nice post telling how to do it) and share it

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

I've stated that the 5MB soundfont may not be the smallest available that we could use. It's definitely possible to have smaller since I found a 1MB one that worked fine, but it wouldn't be legal to include in ROS. Also the soundfont itself doesn't have to be included, it could be in "Download!" or whatever.

[vicmarcal]

I've stated that the 5MB soundfont may not be the smallest available that we could use. It's definitely possible to have smaller since I found a 1MB one that worked fine, but it wouldn't be legal to include in ROS. Also the soundfont itself doesn't have to be included, it could be in "Download!" or whatever.

Well, find a legal one and you can begin discussing with our devs.But until then...few things Devs can do with a non legal file.Adding anything to Download! is not difficult, if it works.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

Is there an upper-range limit for size? Like 2MB? 3MB? Or just "as small as possible as long as it's below 2MB"

Also it's hard to know the legality of many soundfonts when they just kinda are "floating around the web" without any known source, not to mention the source of the sound samples used. Or should any like that be immediately counted as a "no"?

And the one I said that wouldn't be legal, I actually am not 100% sure but I reckon that since it was ripped from a commercial sound card that it would be. Man, and at only 1MB it even correctly played every MIDI I threw at it too! ;_;


EDIT: Well, I did find the Hollywood GM soundfont (3rd listing on here) that's only 600KB. The only thing is that it could only play about half the MIDIs I tried correctly due to some missing sound samples compared to the "Microsoft GS Wavetabe SW Synth" (piano being a main one) - maybe we could try adding in the missing sounds from TimGM6mb?

Otherwise if you want a REALLY basic soundfont just to have SOMETHING, this may do the trick (I would still recommend having a better soundfont in "Download!"). But like I stated, I haven't a clue on the legality because I have no idea of the source of the audio samples.

[grschneider]

Fred: I wasn't talking about refresh rate ("feel"), but frame rates. Just been using Hz terms due to my signal processing background. Most ppl obviously confuse the frame rate/refresh rate.

Nintendo Maniac64: the background of the used sound font is quite important - that might be a problem. We can't use one "found somewhere". There has to be an author/a group of authors connected to the font and a license that applies to ALL font files (plus it has to be compatible with the ReactOS license).

Concerning upper limits: there is none. Just looking from the point of importance: how many ppl will use it? What if some video processing gurus come and suggest to ship 120 codecs and a video editor, built-in? Downloader surely works in those cases, probably a distribution focussing on sound if more is wanted/needed.

[Lone_Rifle]

We can't use one "found somewhere"

You could, just so that you can implement MIDI support around it. The font can then be discarded, and a better one sought.

[Pharaoh_Atem]

We can't use one "found somewhere"

You could, just so that you can implement MIDI support around it. The font can then be discarded, and a better one sought.

If you want a really minimal soundfont that is can be guaranteed inclusion, FluidSynth's source package includes a ~308KB SoundFont in the sf2/ folder. See how well that one works, and maybe that one could be used if TimGM6mb.sf2 can't be included by default.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

The background of the used sound font is quite important - that might be a problem. We can't use one "found somewhere". There has to be an author/a group of authors connected to the font and a license that applies to ALL font files (plus it has to be compatible with the ReactOS license).

Well, for that "Hollywood GM" the guy that made it did at least provide an email address so that he could be contacted, but who knows if 1) He'll respond and 2) that's still his current email.[/quote]

If you want a really minimal soundfont that is can be guaranteed inclusion, FluidSynth's source package includes a ~308KB SoundFont in the sf2/ folder. See how well that one works, and maybe that one could be used if TimGM6mb.sf2 can't be included by default.

Oh, I know what that one is. It DOES play every MIDI I throw at it correctly, but every sound is very synthesized sounding (almost 8-bit sounding even XD) Well, for just having SOMETHING I guess it could work. You can find it on this page. I'll update the suggestion topic and the wiki accordingly.

EDIT: Interesting, I did find ONE MIDI it didn't play correctly. Seems that it doesn't have a sound for steel drums (sound 114), but that's a pretty rarely-used sound anyway (if you're really worried we could add in asound for it or make it play a sound for something else like piano). Either way, this is such a low-quality soundfont for just having MIDI combatibility - if you're doing something with considerable amounts of MIDI you should get a better soundfont.

[Pharaoh_Atem]

If you want a really minimal soundfont that is can be guaranteed inclusion, FluidSynth's source package includes a ~308KB SoundFont in the sf2/ folder. See how well that one works, and maybe that one could be used if TimGM6mb.sf2 can't be included by default.

Oh, I know what that one is. It DOES play every MIDI I throw at it correctly, but every sound is very synthesized sounding (almost 8-bit sounding even XD) Well, for just having SOMETHING I guess it could work. You can find it on this page. I'll update the suggestion topic and the wiki accordingly.

EDIT: Interesting, I did find ONE MIDI it didn't play correctly. Seems that it doesn't have a sound for steel drums (sound 114), but that's a pretty rarely-used sound anyway (if you're really worried we could add in asound for it or make it play a sound for something else like piano). Either way, this is such a low-quality soundfont for just having MIDI combatibility - if you're doing something with considerable amounts of MIDI you should get a better soundfont.

I added two more soundfonts to the wiki, Fluid and PersonalCopy. Both are used in Linux distributions, Fedora uses Fluid R3 for synth with gstreamer or fluidsynth, while timidity typically used PersonalCopy-Lite in patchset form.

[grschneider]

I tried installing an english twsynth release from a japanese sourceforge site. Link: http://sourceforge.jp/projects/twsynth/releases/
Result: it has some problems installing, but playing midi files using the "Windows audio driver" works. Virtual machine was VBox with the typical audio driver trick documented on the wiki. I was able to play my two sample midi tunes.
Sound is pretty nice, though a lot of debug messages makes it stutter from time to time

Screenie:
[ external image ]
timidity++ playing the monkey island opening midi

[Pharaoh_Atem]

I tried installing an english twsynth release from a japanese sourceforge site. Link: http://sourceforge.jp/projects/twsynth/releases/
Result: it has some problems installing, but playing midi files using the "Windows audio driver" works. Virtual machine was VBox with the typical audio driver trick documented on the wiki. I was able to play my two sample midi tunes.
Sound is pretty nice, though a lot of debug messages makes it stutter from time to time

Screenie:
[ external image ]
timidity++ playing the monkey island opening midi

The Windows audio driver is just sending out PCM data to output on speakers, its not really sending a MIDI signal to the system. But this does show that the system works enough that a MIDI driver could probably work.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

I just hope this doesn't make people start trying to implement TiMidity++ in ReactOS instead of FluidSynth... (in case you haven't noticed already, I'm strongly against using TiMidity++, not to mention an absolute sucker for FluidSynth's future-proof-ness)

I guess that I just want this to be done the best it can be the first time, possibly because I'm afraid it'll be ignored once it is implemented (did you see the early posts in this topic saying how this was pointless?), thus making us stuck with TiMidity's overall worse quality.