Newbie, how to setup sfz soundfont?

SFZ soundfonts work the same way as SF2, but please note that most of the SFZ soundfonts contains a single instrument.
Or better, a single .SFZ file describes a single instrument; so if you configured a "GrandPiano.sfz" file and your MIDI has a "Flute" track, well this track will be silent.

I'm not a guru on SFZ files, but I actually haven't seen a GeneralMIDI SFZ file (I mean one with full GM instrument set).

Hi, I have a question about SFZ and Keppy's Steinway Piano.
I only use soundfonts y VMS to listen to music, mostly classical.
Until now my usual soundfonts configuration is a big general sf2 like Timbres of Heaven loaded in first place and Keppy's Stenway Piano 2.4 in second place (I couldn't download version 2.9, kaleidonkep99 removed the link).

Anyway, I downloaded today Keppy's Steinway Piano SFZ v 3.07 and instead of a file there are 206 (and 25 of them are SFZ). So, what I do with them?
Do I need to load KSP Deep Piano.sfz, KSP Normal Piano.sfz, KSP Grand Piano.sfz and KSP Bright Piano.sfz? In which order? Or do I need to load just one of them? Which one? Can I mix sf2 and sfz in the soundfonts configuration?

I just wish listen to the piano in midis with the best possible quality (I have actually read all the documentations that is included with the Keppy's soundfont but it explains nothing about it).
 

retrue wrote:

Hi, I have a question about SFZ and Keppy's Steinway Piano.
I only use soundfonts y VMS to listen to music, mostly classical.
Until now my usual soundfonts configuration is a big general sf2 like Timbres of Heaven loaded in first place and Keppy's Stenway Piano 2.4 in second place (I couldn't download version 2.9, kaleidonkep99 removed the link).

Anyway, I downloaded today Keppy's Steinway Piano SFZ v 3.07 and instead of a file there are 206 (and 25 of them are SFZ). So, what I do with them?
Do I need to load KSP Deep Piano.sfz, KSP Normal Piano.sfz, KSP Grand Piano.sfz and KSP Bright Piano.sfz? In which order? Or do I need to load just one of them? Which one? Can I mix sf2 and sfz in the soundfonts configuration?

I just wish listen to the piano in midis with the best possible quality (I have actually read all the documentations that is included with the Keppy's soundfont but it explains nothing about it).

You can load the SFZ files in any order you want, but VMS gets tricky with them.

There's no way (right now) to select specific preset and bank on VMS, while my driver does offer a way to do that:

http://i.imgur.com/HUBE80H.png

http://i.imgur.com/7EECyhe.png

I think Claudio should implement something like this in the latest versions of both VMS 1.x and VMS 2.x.

Also yes, you can mix SFZs and SF2s (Overrides are supported too, like normal soundfont files).

retrue wrote:

Which one?

Uh, that's up to you! Different tastes! :P

retrue wrote:

Yesterday I was two hours trying to make sfz works without success. But today I was able to get sound. I tried so many things that I don't know what was the problem and what was the solucion.
Still, sfz doesn't work for me with XMPlay. I get an error message saying "The following fonts cannot be found/loaded" and the list of all the ogg files of the soundfont with its correct path. Mysteries of computers.
Anyway, thanks to CoolSoft and Keppy for their answers.

CoolSoft VMS doesn't have BASSOPUS.DLL in the setup, so it can't play OGG soundfonts correctly. (My KSP is based off OGG samples)

Same thing applies to XMPlay. (I think)

retrue wrote:

Opus? OGG depends on FLAC.

Btw, sfz with OGG samples work in VirtualMIDISynth 1.15.1. Listening to Rhapsody in Blue for piano (I only loaded the Keppy's soundfont in the VMS soundfont configurator) But to make it work I had to copy the normal Grand Piano.sfz file in the Samples/Grand folder. It seems that VMS is not able to load the samples if they are in a different folder than the sfz file. Maybe it is a bug.
Yesterday I installed too a OGG codec for Windows Media Player. I don't know if it is necessary to make work sfz with OGG samples on VMS. I'll uninstall the OGG codec to see if it is necessary.

EDIT: I just  uninstalled the directsound OGG codec and VMS1 continues working with SFZ and OGG samples. So, the only necessary thing is to put the sfz file in the same folder where the samples are.
 

It relies on BASSOPUS for me. :o

I think Claudio is using an outdated version of BASSMIDI, which doesn't support the "default_path" parameter.