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Apps & SOUNDFONTS: Whats good n'da hood?
What apps do you use for Soundfonts?
Can you Airdrop them in?
How do they load? Direct? Or what do you house your sound font library in on an iOS device?
I have never used them but have a good library I never utilized and thinking about it.
THANKS
Comments
I've found BS-16i to be the best for my purposes. I like the sleekness and (I think) lower memory footprint of the SoundFonts app. But after much A/B comparison of the sound, I think BS-16i sounds better. I do have the high-fidelity IAP from BS-16i turned on. I don't know if that explains the difference though.
Soundfonts have to be imported into each app, but this doesn't take up more physical storage on the device due to the way iOS handles "copies" of files.
Drag 'n drop? Haven't tried it. It's not important to me for sound fonts.
I think we need a format that's a lot more like the REX files that wrap up samples and loops.
And contain details about loop points, etc.
SF2's are showing their age with the bias towards the "General MIDI" packages that we'd load into
our PC sound cards in the 90's (SoundBlaster and GUS anyone).
SFZ'es add more metadata we need but in ways that tend to be hardware specific and we emulate hardware so they are hit or miss.
Apple sees the concept and makes the ESX24 format which has soundfont and loop packaging concepts
and allows Apple to use their Apple only audio formats.
I did discover I can grab a Kontakt sampled instrument and import the raw audio into AudioLayer to get more "free" instruments from sites like PianoBook where users make sample recordings and share them freely but often in Kontakt only packages.
The new "Soundfonts" app is a lower cost alternative to the full featured BS-16i which implements the classic General MIDI hardware playback device like a Roland Soundcanvas or Yamaha rack unit.
In some ways I prefer SFZ format. They're single instrument, so no storage and loading of 128 orchestral patches you don't need just to get that one violin sound you want. And, they're editable with a simple text editor, if you know what you're doing. They can share samples as long as the path to find them is correct in the SFZ text file. You can replace individual samples without changing the instrument setup at all.
The huge downside is path management. All you have to do is get the path to the samples wrong because it was specific to another device, or to move your sample folder, and your SFZ instrument is broken. 99% of the problems people have with SFZ instruments have to do with screwed up folder paths, and most people don't know how to fix such things.\
At least a sf2 file is self-contained and unlikely to break. Still, as a tech person who's able to troubleshoot SFZ file problems, I would prefer to stick with them if I had my way.
Good points. I just wish the free SFZ inventory was better. Are their good sites to grab them
other than "musical artifacts" which has been my go to for free sound fonts after getting everything
from soundfonts4u. Muse Score has some good free stuff too. But you quickly run out of inventory to
try and ignore since a lot of it is so old... and uses really tiny samples.
I don't do a lot of working with either sf2 or sfz. But, I do sometimes take sf2 files and convert individual instruments from them into sfz using the free sforzando app for MacOS and Windows.
other than auria pro, Sfz has been a pain in the ass to implement in a reliable way on iOS. Audiolayer is faster than it used to be, but its hit and miss when trying to impor some SFZ or EXS24 libraries. BS-16i was by far the easiest to implement. I use chicken system’s translator 7 software to convert a bunch of kontakt, exs24 and sfz libraries into self-contained sf2 files. Now I have a ton of my libraries from my computer on my ipad and for everything other than libraries with key switches, it totally works.
SoundFonts AU has been working very well for me, especially since the developer Recently released a couple updates with improvements.
Also huge UPs to the SoundFonts AU developer for making the source code public as a service to chumps like me trying to get a start with iOS programming.
That’s cool, I did not know that.
A lot of great points! you actually read between the lines precisely at what I was thinking! love it
Thanks!
Yes, that is the point as well...all those libraries and no where to use them here for me!
There are some great free soundfonts here:
https://sites.google.com/site/despianosvirtuels/
Thanks Tim!
for most cases, if you sample good instruments, soundfonts are a great option for iOS. I tried the soundfont app, and it's fine, but bs-16 lets you adjust effects, cutoff, portamento and other things that might help you get more from your libraries.
Usings a library convertor, or auto-sampler like synthjacker on iOS, is a great way to get all the bang for your buck.
I was using BS-16i but have recently started using the Soundfonts module in 4pockets NuRack. One thing I don't like about 16i is that the rotary controls are wonky. Difficult to make precise adjustments smoothly on the touchscreen interface.
Appreciate it!