[linux-audio-user] Questions about qsynth, swami and soundfonts

Having located a collection of soundfonts that I like, I'm interested in
performing. I like the graphical interface to qsynth for loading and
using soundfonts, but there are a couple of limitations for live
performance it seems. Maybe these things are ignorance on my part and if
so I hope that somebody can put an end to that state.

First, in order to change the current soundfont, you've got to select
Channels, then right click on the channel you want to change and hunt
for the soundfont you want in that channel. This is partially mitigated
by having presets, but what that implies to me is that I'd have to have
a preset for every soundfont program that I ever want to use. What I'd
really like is a simple list of all the programs and be able to select
the one I want with one click. How do others deal with this?

Second, it seems that soundfonts can hide other soundfonts. In other
words, the order in which you place the soundfonts in setup/soundfonts
matters. If you've got a soundfont that claims the same program number
that comes after another soundfont in the list, that program hides the
other one. Even in the best of worlds this would be a problem - the best
of worlds defined as one in which the soundfont authors actually used
the suggested midi program numbers for standard instruments (i.e. 64 for
Soprano Sax, etc). It is a problem since many soundfonts have the same
instrument with different tones (Hard Tenor Sax, Soft Tenor Sax) which
would both want to use the same number, but can't within the same
soundfont. In the world that we live in however, soundfont authors often
ignore the midi program numbers and just number their programs from 1
all to commonly, which exacerbates the hiding problem. Now, the hiding
seems gratuitous since qsynth assigns each soundfound an SFID
(presumably soundfont ID) which means that if the key was SFID/program
number then it wouldn't matter that two soundfonts used the same range
of numbers, but for some reason in qsynth this does seem to matter. I
don't believe this is a generic issue since the same collection of
soundfonts in freewheeling allows one to browse through each soundfont
and select any program in that soundfont.

Having encountered this problem, I decided to take matters into my own
hands and renumber the conflicting soundfonts so there was no conflict.
Having produced my own soundfont for Soprano Sax (recently corrected for
some notes tuning available at http://juraview.com/SopranoSax.sf2) using
swami, I didn't feel any hesitation about loading the fonts and
renumbering the programs. Unfortunately I can't find any way to renumber
the programs in swami which is weird since I distinctly remember having
done this with my soprano sax font, but this was well over a year ago.
Has this capability been removed from swami or am I just missing it?

Any suggestions (other than FOAD) will be appreciated.

Bill
Received on Sat Apr 15 20:15:06 2006