sfz soundfont silent in playback and export
I'm trying to use an sfz format soundfont through the Zerberus synthesiser, and during playback and after export, it's completely silent. The particular soundfont I'm trying to use is "Keppy's Steinway," using the preset "Concert Grand (Hammers)," found here: https://github.com/KaleidonKep99/Keppy-Steinway-Piano
I've tried the solutions that google could dig up for me, none of them worked, it's simply just silent in every case. If somebody could advise me why it doesn't work and if there is a way to fix it, that would be fabulous.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
Welcome on board. I do not know whether it is compatible. Meanwhile, have you taken a look here: https://musescore.org/en/node/96811?
Are you selecting the proper sound using the Mixer?
In reply to both comments so far, I have infact chosen the sound, and every other sf2/sf3 file loaded works, but no sfz files from this particular pack work, although I have not tested with other sfz files. If there is a specific format the MuseScore loads them in that is different in these sfz files that I'd need to change for, I'd be happy to give it a go, because I really want to get this soundfont working.
In reply to In reply to both comments so by ZeScratch
IIRC MuseScore <= 2.0.3 works only with a limited set of SFZ files, see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/soundfont#list
A lot of work has been put into this during this year's GSoC, so the situation should improve greatly if and when 2.0.4 and/or 3.0 get released, until then you may be able to give the nightly builds a try, see https://musescore.org/en/download#Nightly-versions
You had me completely mystified here as the version of Keppy's Steinway I had works fine with Zerberus.
It wasn't until I downloaded the version from your link that I realised this was different.
Incidentally the preset you mention doesn't exist in either the version I had originally, or the version I have just downloaded from GitHub, but I have established that the Base Hammers preset contains a group opcode at the beginning full of opcodes that the version of Zerberus in MuseScore 2 doesn't support. Ergo I'm assuming that is the problem.
You will be able to get it working by hacking the SFZ file in a text editor. I've attached the list of SFZ Opcodes that the MuseScore 2 version does/does not recognise.
I strongly recommend you work on a backup of the SFZ file rather than the original!
HTH
In reply to You had me completely by ChurchOrganist
And esp. on the SFZ opcode front some work had been done during this year's GSoC, so as mentioned above it may work already in the nightly builds, and if so, will do in 2.0.4 and 3.0 if and when these get released
In reply to You had me completely by ChurchOrganist
Great, this is a brilliant little list thrown together. Thanks for the research. I've attempted using the MuseScore Nightly builds, the latest one as of this post, on my Macbook Air. It blew up in my face trying to use nearly 7GB of the 4GB of ram I have. So that leaves me with experimenting with more ram (which I don't have at this point in time) or hacking the sfz file. If it would be possible, unless there's a massive quality difference between the current version and the version of Keppy's that works with your installation, could you please refer me to a download? Otherwise, I'm wondering what opcodes to swap, remove and add to temporarily fix the problem. I'm not all that familiar with soundfont editing, but I'm willing to get into it if it fixes problems like these. Looking at the file here, it's got most of the same opcodes as the base hammers preset.
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: I guess I forgot to mention it's called "Ultrarealism, Hammers." I didn't realise my error until I read your comment.
In reply to Great, this is a brilliant by ZeScratch
OK I have good news and I have bad news :)
The good news is that you can get your version of Keppy's Piano to be recognised by Zerberus.
The bad news is that the soundfont is too big to load into Zerberus. I think this is due to MuseScore being a 32bit application, as the load process stops at around 4GB which is the amount of RAM capable of being addressed by a 32bit program.
I think this is due to the number of velocity layers Keppy has introduced into the SFZ file. Zerberus seems to reload the samples for each velocity layer, so with the 11 velocity layers in the file it is wanting to load the roughly half GB of samples 11 times, which totals roughly 6.5GB, way beyond the 4GB limit.
The much earlier version I possess (3.07) will work with Zerberus and you can find the SFZ files for this in the legacy folder in your version. I had forgotten that I had hacked my version to work with Zerberus, however :)
The culprit opcode is <default_path> to get the soundfont to work with Zerberus all you need to do is to copy the path from this opcode into each sample definition, which is easily done by copy and paste.
eg default_path=..\..\..\..\Samples\CnrtGrnd\
Copy this bit of the opcode: ..\..\..\..\Samples\CnrtGrnd\
Into each sample definition.....
So sample=KEPSREC021.wav becomes.......
sample=..\..\..\..\Samples\CnrtGrnd\KEPSREC021.wav
You should be able to use find and replace to do this quickly if you have it in your text editor
If you then save the SFZ file with a different filename in the same directory (I tagged "Mscore" onto the end of the existing filename) you can then add it in the usual way.
HTH