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New version of the accurate-salamander piano soundfont released (SFZ).
Thought I’d share this here for other piano soundfont nerds like me who collect good sounding free piano soundfonts.
The accurate salamander project released a new version of their free piano soundfont recently. It’s based off the famous and free salamander piano samples. The samples were all re-tuned and corrected for even smoother sounding piano. It’s a 16 layer SFZ soundfont, and it loads ands plays fine for me using the isfizz app.
You can check out the project website here: https://www.ir.isas.jaxa.jp/~cyamauch/AccurateSalamander/
Comments
Thanks for posting that. I meant to pick up the previous version but didn't for some reason.
Of the four flavors, do you have a favorite, or one that seems the most versatile?
I’ve only used the regular flat version and the soft Noct version. Of those two I mostly use the regular one, but I’m working on a soft song at the moment and think the Noct will be better. I think I’ll grab them all and compare.
I saw the following in the download area today which sounds interesting…
” To enable "Release String Resonances", "Hammer Noise", and "Pedal Noise", set CC20=64, CC21=64, and CC22=64 respectively. They are disalbed by default. We recommend disabling them for software that does not fully support SFZ v2.”
I’ve never noticed that before, will play around with that some also.
Thanks @Dav. I'm off to explore. Lotta good it'll do since I'm no piano player and can barely tell the differences in most good pianos.
Lol, well have fun. I’m playing the regular one in isfizz right now - isfizz lets me adjust those special parameters in the app (resonance, pedal & hammer noise) so I don’t have to edit the sfz file. It is a nice sounding piano soundfont I think. Well balanced.
Yea I need isfizz
I'm also not a keyboard player, just a tinkerer. Wondering how you would compare using something like the accurate salamander soundfont within isfizz auv3 vs other relatively low-cost options that are out there
It's long been recognized as one of the best piano sound fonts available, and now has been made arguably far better. isfizz costs $2.99 US and is an outstanding sfz player. It has the great advantage that it can stream from disk, making it possible to use much larger sound fonts in an AUv3 plugin with less susceptibility to memory issues.
What's not to like? Well, maybe the large size of the sample set. If you're short of storage, there are other variants available that consume less space but are still of good quality.
So, I'd say it's very attractive compared to other low cost options. The only expense is isfizz, and that is well worth having since its a great player for all kinds of SFZ sound font instruments. Simple, lightweight, and rock solid.
I would say for the price (and that is the low price for the isfizz app). it may be the best iOS option for a quality sounding piano. There are some good free pianos, but none of the free ones I’ve found sound as good to me as this one.
Isfizz has been very stable for me as an auv3. I didn’t use it much when I first got it, but after finding a lot of great free sfz soundfonts to use it’s been very useful. It’s really worth the price. If you get it, here are a couple of places to find some sfz soundfonts.
(All free)
https://freepats.zenvoid.org/
(Some commercial listed)
https://sfzinstruments.github.io/
It's a good practice with isfizz to put all of your sfz sound fonts in a single folder structure on your device. Then, in isfizz specify the SFZ folder as that top level folder. If you do that you'll avoid having to set the folder each time to find the files.
Also, while isfizz will load samples from iCloud, it will warn that this can cause issues. Best practice is to either store them locally, or if on iOS 18 or higher, long-press the folder in iCloud Drive in the files app and select "Keep Downloaded" on each device you'll use them on.
That’s a good tip, @wim. I think I will store my sfz soundfonts that way. Another free SFZ piano I recently tried is “piano in 162”. Don’t know if it’s been mentioned here before. It’s a really large download. Has a lot of character though. Anyone tried that one?
Cool! Thanks for posting the links @Dav
Apparently, I already have isfizz installed. Will be doing some experimenting.
Glad to share it, @Edward_Alexander. I’m sometimes getting hanging notes when using the sfz_daw presets, but not with the sfz_live ones. To my piano tuner ears, it’s a joy to play this retuned salamander. I ended up deleting the “piano in 162” soundfont. That one’s not bad for free either, but it’s too much of a space hog for my iPad.
Thanks all, I've purchases isfizz and downloaded the current salamander soundfont and it sounds great!
I'm using a newly acquired Novation Launchkey Mini 37 and wondering if anyone uses similar setup who might be able to help me better understand what I might do to boost the incoming volume level of the salamander sound (isfizz running as Auv3 in Loopy Pro with channel faders at 0db). Playing on the launchkey keyboard with velocity set at anything but "off" in the settings, does not allow me to get a volume level that either matches what I hear when playing on the virtual keyboard in isfizz w/ salamander loaded or the volume level of my other instruments I'm playing in Loopy Pro with the same novation keyboard, such as J6 Synch One. Any thoughts on areas to explore very much welcome... Thanks
A couple of things:
Many synths or synth patches are set up with limited dynamic variation based on velocity.
The salamander sfz is probably set up to have a lot of dynamics so that playing soft, medium and loud covers a wide dynamic range. Your keyboard probably requires a pretty hard press to get a high velocity out of it.
Hi @danm. I don’t use loopy pro or have a novation so I can’t help there, but you can raise the output volume of the piano inside the isfizz app. It defaults to 100 but can be raised to 127.
Thanks to you both.
@Dav, I had already tried to raise that volume from 120 to 127 and didn't really notice much difference, I believe because it's likely less about the max volume, but more about the velocity of getting to that volume. And it appears that the Launchkey Mini 37 doesn't support any type of control over it's fader settings as far as I can tell, which I was hoping to try to raise, which was something suggested by @espiegel123, and may have addressed the issue.
Another thing I looked at...In the Auv3 setting for isfizz in Loopy I could raise the gain above 0dB, but that seems like it might lead to other issues later on with oversaturation or clipping, so I prefer not to do that
Raising the gain will only cause distortion if the output level goes over 0.
Look at the audio meter in Loopy’s mixer for isfizz. Increase the fader level in the mixer or in isfizz to get the level you want.
@danm : on the midi side, you can use a midi monitor to see what velocities result when you raise the midi fader.
You can also try turning some other things down. 😉
Haha, yup. Certainly trying that, as well. Some of this is just confirming I'm not missing anything obvious in my attempts to get better relative sound levels, so appreciate it. One interesting thing with the Launchkey 37 mini is that out-of-the-box, the levels of the pads appears to be substantially higher than the keys (at the same ootb setting levels for velocity, etc), so some of this may just be getting accustomed to the specifics/quirks of this little midi controller as well and updating the settings where appropriate. Do you have a favorite 37 key or slightly larger midi controller you use with Loopy Pro? If so, would be interested, as I'm open to trying other midi controllers too, since they'll all have their pluses/minuses. Realize may need to start a new thread in the LP forum for this, but for now, will add it here, Thanks again all!
There's a Mozaic script that might help with the response curve from the Launchkey: curvemaker
I've never tried it, however.
There's also an older app suite that has a curve tool. iPad only. https://apps.apple.com/app/midi-tools/id1446209019
There are probably others.
Thanks @wim. I read up a bit on the salamander implementation and modified the .sfz file value for 'amp_veltrack' from it's original 94 value down to 80.0, which seems to boost the lower end volume at the lower velocity a bit.
Here's the definition of Veltrack on the Github page for the Salamander sound font:
Veltrack : Dynamic range / velocity to volume response
Not sure it's the best solution or if there might be unexpected side effects, still need to do more research, but for those also looking to boost the volume at the lower end of the velocity as I am, this may be an option.
Cool @danm. I’d like to learn howto tweak with sfz settings too. Will read up on it.
Well, after a couple of day testing this soundfont pretty hard with isfizz, I’ve come the following conclusions. It’s a great sounding free piano soundfont - and isfizz rocks! One thing I don’t like about the salamander piano is the staccato notes can’t be played short enough for my liking with some music styles.. Don’t know if there’s a way to tweak that at all. Also, the sfz_daw presets seem to leave hangings notes occasionally for me, so I only use the sfz_live ones which work fine.
For those of you who are curious to know how the accurate salamander piano font sounds using isfizz, I quickly improved a small sample attached below. This is recorded using the regular accurate salamander piano with the flat recommended sfz_live preset. Recorded live in AUM+isfizz with no plug-ins at all, no compression, eq, etc. it’s pure soundfont sound. I set isfizz to use 160 note polyphony which my iPad 9th gen handles ok. This isn’t a song, just improving on some chords, running up and down the entire keyboard, and using a lot of sustained notes to show how well the isfizz handles this soundfont.
I finally got “Save to Files” to appear on one of the Drive instances of the download.
That placed a copy in the standard “Downloads” directory to unzip and import into
Isfizz.
Isfizz is also tricky:
You must select the *.sfz file to install and also show it where the samples are located in a 2 step process.
I’m not sure yet that Isfizz will remember these 2 essential files to reload the piano.
@McD : After I downloaded the zips to my downloads area on my iPad, I used the files app to browse there and just clicked on the zip, and the iPad unpacks/extracts it, creating a folder for the sfz soundfont. Then when using isfizz, I just open the sfz file that was extracted. isfizz will also ask for the folder the samples are located.
Ok. I'm not getting the files into my downloads. I can see them in my Google Drives folder but using download there takes several minutes of data transfer that terminates with an error message.
I'm going to try downloading with an android phone and a MacBook to get at the zip file(s).
I do like a good puzzle.
I noticed Google Drive was not turned on as a listed location in my Files app and I turned it on but no change in behavior yet.
Excellent sleuthing. I was going to suggest looking into that, but didn't have time to check into it.
Now for the Bonus Round! See if you can hook it up to a MIDI CC so it appears on the parameters page and you can change it on the fly. You'll have to learn some things about the SFZ format. It's a darn cool thing to know though. 😎
There's a release parameter on the parameters page. If you want the setting to "stick" without having to save a preset, then dive into the SFZ file and find where the CC is initially set in the code. It shouldn't be too hard to find but I can help if needed. That is, if that fixes the issue for you.
Ah, interesting @wim . Been trying to get this to work, but for some reason isfizz doesn't seem to be including the opcodes I'm adding to the control group section, not sure why ... will try again tomorrow
If you get too stuck, let me know and I'll see if I can dust off that part of my brain. It's been a bit, but I was heavy into it a year or so ago.
Thanks, @wim., I’ll play with that setting when I get back home today from my gigs.