Hi. I'm testing this free (libre) 'grand piano' soundfont on Caustic 3 and I would like to share it with the community (132,2 MiB): http://zenvoid.org/audio/
I think it sounds very good and could be suitable for any style of music.
Saludos. :)
Acoustic grand piano
Hi Ed, thanks.
It's quite a big file, does it have several velocity layers? I'm not sure how the PCM Synth reads multi layer files, and somebody can correct me if I'm wrong here but I don't think it is yet capable of mapping velocity to different sample layers in order to give you the expression of a real piano. I think it currently just reads and plays a single layer at different volumes.
In fact this is a question I have been meaning to ask the developer: If I load a multi layer Soundfont into the PCM Synth, which layer does it choose to play? And what happens to all the other layers, do they just sit idle in memory or do they not get loaded at all?
I'm sure there are plans for a new, improved sampler in future versions of Caustic which will be capable of interpreting all the layers but for the time being using large, multi layer Soundfonts might be a bit of a waste of space...!
Rej recently said that caustic takes the first layer it finds and use that. To share a soundfont for caustic it's better to first save it as a pcm preset and then upload it in the preset area.
correct, Pan65
Thanks Pan65/Rej! I can sleep well tonight now that I know that..!
Hi and thanks for the comments. I'm learning about Caustic and all related things so any advice is welcome.
About the layers, when I load the soundfont it offers me five options: piano 127, 100, 112, 122 and 117. As fast workaround, I could use five PCMSynth and load one layer in each one, or just the layers needed. I'm going to test that tonight. I'll have to deal with some PCMSynths at the same time but it could work. :)
https://soundcloud.com/edcastiello
Hi Ed,
Yes you could do that but you wouldn't be able to play all five PCM Synths live as you would need to set them all to the same MIDI channel which I don't think is possible yet. You could programme it that way but it would be very time consuming to make it sound expressive. Depending upon the style of music and how exposed the piano would be in the mix a simpler approach may be to load one PCM with the most average sounding sample (117?) and then load the 127 sample in to another PCM and just use that for accenting specific notes so that there is some variation in timbre.
Let us know how you get on.
Hi pablo64, thanks for the reply. I think your approach is right with 117 and 127 but I added 122 also, it could be useful. I'm going to test it more deeply this weekend, hehe. :D
Anyway, as you said it depends on the style of music, mixer, song context, etc.
https://soundcloud.com/edcastiello