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I may be missing something basic then. How do you sequence the MIDI from SJ to a hardware synth?
As I wrote in my previous post: SynthJacker uses a MIDI sequencer to drive the external synth. It basically plays a MIDI file generated on the fly into the selected port.
To be more specific, it uses the MIKMIDI library to first generate a MIDI file at a tempo of 60.0 BPM (in memory), and inserts the notes into a track in the file, at the designated times. Then it simply plays the MIDI file (again using MIKMIDI) to the selected MIDI port and channel. The MIDI file just has simple Note On and Note Off commands.
MIKMIDI has its own MIDI sequencer, which deep down under the hood uses Core MIDI.
As I implied, it may well be that I'm missing something basic and obvious. I read the Audiobus developer documentation twice, and tried to find a hook for SJ in that context, but I came to the conclusion that it couldn't be done.
Ok, so basically you can’t redirect MIKMIDI to a MIDI port other than a Core MIDI port? Since other non AUv3 apps require Virtual MIDI, not Core MIDI, it can’t send MIDI to those apps?
Based on the documentation, MIKMIDI supports also virtual MIDI ports, not just physical device ports. I've never used that feature, though.
If you did, it would open up access to most of the non AUv3 synth apps. They could then be sampled either by using a loopback on the hardware audio port, or by adding support for capturing Audiobus audio output. The best match for configuring settings for either scenario would be your external settings section. It’s AUv3 that does things differently.
SynthJacker Fall Equinox Sale - from now through Sunday 27 September you can get SynthJacker for approx. 33 1/3 % off the regular price. That amounts to US $5.99 if I’m not mistaken.
Latest update v0.8.2 was released just a week ago or so. Next version will most likely be for iOS 13 and up. (I considered dropping iOS 11 already at the end of last year, but didn’t. Now it seems that some crucial things were fixed by Apple in the meantime.)
If you have any trouble with iOS 14, or anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out.
I won’t be joining you with that next update then, as I’m staying on iOS12, but if you don’t intend to support Virtual MIDI, that won’t be much of a hardship.
I was thinking about getting synthjacker to re-sample some of my desktop libraries for use on my iPad. I was wondering how well the “bring your own audio file” is working. I would load the MIDI file in my desktop DAW (reaper) and render out the audio and bring that over.
It works great for me @espiegel123, though I haven't used it extensively. The only thing I remember needing to be careful about is to first trim any silence from the beginning of the audio file. If you don't, it throws the slicing off.
Thanks.
It works perfectly for me, and it's super quick as well.
Idem, works like a charm!
I got this to sample IAA only synths, but the method for that is far more convoluted than it appeared at first sight. In fairness, the Dev explained it wasn’t designed for this purpose. I fell victim to my own wishful thinking since it made more sense to me to have the ability to easily sample IAA single instance/soon to be deprecated apps than AU apps that allow multiple instances. I thought for sure direct IAA sampling would come in a future update, but this is not the case according to Dev. As it stands now, it’s far easier to sample IAA’s directly into BM3 than it is to use Synthjacker. Wanna be clear that it was my hopeful assumption and not the app itself that is the problem.
Can someone give an example of how you use this in a real world application? Say I want a sound from Model D and I jack it. How do I use it now? What apps are you using to play the jacked audio?
I would be using the results in AudioLayer. Any sample player that handles sfz can easily use them. Some use them in Nanostudio 2s sampler.
Ahhhh.... “ Some use them in Nanostudio 2s sampler.”. This is music to my ears!
Thanks! I bough this app a while ago and have barely used it because I didn’t see a way into workflow. NS2 = definitely in my workflow at times, sweet!!!
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/35665/tip-to-considerably-speed-up-synthjacker-sampling
nvm. Should not try to post before the coffee kicks in.
If you set up a dedicated Synthjacker project in a DAW you can sample anything in seconds:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/35665/tip-to-considerably-speed-up-synthjacker-sampling
I would be using it (as mentioned up-thread) to sample something from desktop. I’d be rendering the audio to desktop and having synthjacker do the slicing. I don’t have a convenient way to send MIDI to the desktop and get its audio back in for AudioLayer to sample. AudioLayer works great for sampling from the same device but not so much for my use case. Rendering from the MIDI file Synthjacker provides and handing it the resulting audio file would be easier and provide cleaner audio than if I send audio out of my desktop interface into another audio interface connected to my iPad.
I have a few piano and percussion libraries on desktop that sound better than anything I have in iOS.
Yes. I realized that a second after I hit "post". You beat me to the edit.
@richardyot thank you, I’ll have to try that. Hopefully BM3 plays nice, it’s my preferred DAW.
Does synthjacker have a round robin option?
No, I'm not sure that makes any sense? It outputs midi note and velocity. Velocities in order from low to high. Round robin would have to be something that happens in the sampler itself, not in the samples you feed into it.
I guess maybe what you mean is can it play each note at the same velocity multiple times? I guess if that's what you need, then editing the resulting midi file so that all the velocities are the same might work, but file naming of the resulting samples might confuse the sampler you're loading it into.
I dunno, I'm pretty confused by your question.
What I meant is that for sampling an instrument that does round-robins, one could have a midi file that strikes a note 2 or three times in succession at the same velocity -- and then when chopping of the file, it would know that and name the files accordingly.
This is mostly useful when resampling an instrument that has round robins. I am asking because my main use for synth jacker would be making versions of a couple of favorite desktop pianos and at least one of them uses round robins. The same is true of a couple of drum kits, too.
I would just create the midi file as though you wanted velocity layers, then edit the resulting midi file to bring up the velocity levels to be all the same. It seems like that would only take a minute. Keep in mind that once you have a midi file, you can use it over and over, with any synths that are appropriate for that configuration, so the edit only needs to be done once.
No, and as wim pointed out, it's a feature of the sample playback engine, not the sampling engine.
If you are sampling an instrument that uses round robin for playback, it's like that perennial box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get. It depends on how many samples the instrument uses for the round robin, and how they are used (sequentially or randomly selected, for example). So if you play successive notes at velocity x, the sample you capture may be just one of the possible samples, and even if you make several runs with the same velocity x, they may differ.
So I kind of see what you're getting at, but SynthJacker does not have any specific allowances for that, by definition.
While round robin is a feature of the thing being sampled and there are many flavors, it is also the case that an auto-sampling engine such as sj could have an option to repeat notes x times and take that into account when slicing and naming the notes. You might choose not to implement it, but it is s feature that would be useful for that are resampling some instruments.
True enough that one won't know what round robin strategy the host uses (random, strict rotation) but repeat options would allow one to get closer than just a single sample per note. And the autosampler could add the appropriate opcodes to the sfz it generates.
Agreed. In that case there would have to be an additional distinguishing identifier, so that it would be possible to tell apart successive samples of the same note at the same velocity. Currently the case with SJ is that the naming is just SoundName-note-velocity (in whichever format you choose). That would have to extend to SoundName-note-velocity-uniqueID.
I haven't checked (but maybe I should) if other auto-samplers (like SampleRobot and AutoSampler in Logic Pro) deal with this somehow. Certainly it has never been requested so far of SJ. Should I consider this as a feature request then?
Yes, just so the user realizes that if they don't know the exact behavior of the source instrument, then they might not get what they expect.
I had a look around, and it seems that SFZ supports round robin somehow (see https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=392887), but I'd have to think about it more to get to the bottom of it.
@coniferprod : i am trying to do a bring your own file where I rendered audio on my desktop from the MIDI file from synthjacker -- and it crashes about 2 seconds into slicing (before any files are saved).