VOGONS


First post, by stgiga

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Hello everyone. I just wanted to share my soundfont that I made using various free soundfonts, including Yet another Soundfont, and more. It is 4GiB and made for most midis on the web. It has a page at http://www.stgigafunware.weebly.com

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Reply 1 of 44, by Falcosoft

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Hi,
I have just tested your soundfont a little and it's generally quite good. Just a few observations:
1. The Orchestra (Symphony in your sf2) drum set is too quiet compared to other drums/instruments. Good test files are Warcraft intro midi and Duke Nukem Futurmil.mid. Especially note E3(40) is too quiet. (I have used mainly Roland SC-VA as a reference)
2. It's good the soundfont has an MT-32 compatible bank so Dune1 and Monkey Island1 can be played with it, but in Monkey Island I have noticed that Bank MSB 127 Program 77 Panflute has a flawed loop since it stops completely after 4 seconds.
3. It would be good if at least the Capital tones/GM Bank instruments had real names instead of just numbers.

Besides I think the description on your website is a little bit deceptive:

It works with the Roland MT-32 and CM-32L, MMA General MIDI Level 1, Roland GS, Yamaha XGlite, Yamaha XG Level 1, MMA General MIDI 2, Roland SC-88, Roland SC-88 Pro, Roland SC-8820, Roland SC-8850, & Roland StudioCanvas* standards to at least some degree.

The thing is your soundfont is neither GM2 nor XG/XG Lite compatible. To be fair none of the SF2 files can be XG compatible. You have written:

Due to how patches are arranged as CC0 Bank Select MSB only, because of editor limits...,

But it's not an editor but format limitation. More info:
Soundfonts that mimic old hardware (SC-55, DX50XG, AWE64 Gold)
Even in XG lite Bank MSB+LSB addressing is mandatory since without Bank LSB support you can not have variation banks at all (only Melodic/Drum/Sfx banks by switching Bank MSB).

Explicit GM2 support requires Drum sets to be available at Bank MSB 120. It's easy to achieve if you want, you can simply map GS drum sets to this bank since it's empty now.
I know bassmidi emulates GM2 drums by mapping soundfont Bank 128 to Bank MSB 120 if you send a GM2 reset (and also does this in case of XG by mapping drum bank 128 to Bank MSB 127) but bassmidi does this with ANY soundfonts. So the truth is bassmidi itself is GM2/XG compatible in this respect, not your soundfont.
Bye

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Reply 2 of 44, by stgiga

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Thanks for the comment. Yes, I know it is not XG compatible to normal versions of XG, but the soundfonts I got the pseudo-Yamaha XG support from had the XG1 presets mapped into the MSB equivalent of their real XG versions. Some versions of Coolsoft and Keppy's Bassmidi forks do map these. Same goes for sc88-series presets I also wish to say that the lack of Bank 127 XG Drums, Bank 120 GM2 Drums, or Bank 121 Gm2 presets is due to the fact that I have filled up the instrument generator limit, and cannot find channel-independent versions of certain drumsets. I also have only been able to find GM2 Melodic Instruments that are mapped into the first few banks instead of Bank 121 as this is how most charts I saw map it, going all the way up to Bank 4 from Bank 1, as seen on certain charts: https://soundprogramming.net/file-formats/gen … nstrument-list/ http://www.sinclairdesign.com/b/blog/piste/gm … 5-lx7-and-lx17/ I used these as reference for the GM2 implementation I used. In essence, I tried my best with what I had to work with. The looping issues in the strings and others you mentioned were present in the base soundfonts before I did anything to them. Thank you for saying it is good despite that. It works great on your player. Thank you very much for testing it for me. I made it with SynthFont Vienna and Polyphone at first.

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Reply 3 of 44, by stgiga

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I also wish to inform you that because I ran out of room, I cannot make the pseudo-XG drum sets use XG/88/GS-only samples, and I know about the volume issue and Missing cymbal+claps drum set. I also know the MT32 presets are too quiet, as they are sampled from Awave Studio using ROM Dumps as a source. I can't fix that either...

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Reply 4 of 44, by RetroGC

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stgiga wrote:

The looping issues in the strings and others you mentioned were present in the base soundfonts before I did anything to them.

Can you indicate, which instruments on your soundfont suffer this king of issue, as it is possible for example to change them when reproducing with sygx 50 or similar for example and avoid this king of issue when recording a midi?

Aldo

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Reply 5 of 44, by stgiga

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The string presets suffer this, even the extended and MT32 ones. Some other MT32 presets may be looping too much in this way as well. You will know if an instrument does this if you hear the attack portion play again while holding a note, indicating a bad loop. The MT32 presets are quiet because of them being ROM rips. XG is louder than MT32, but quieter than GM. The ideal way to avoid it is to compose around the issue. One more thing: SC88 and beyond do EFX parameters that do not appear to be in bassmidi. This mean ambitious compositions will sound more like dry recordings unless XG effects are used instead. Those DO work on SC88Pro, 8820, 8850, and BassMidi. There may be less options though.

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Reply 6 of 44, by Falcosoft

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One more thing: SC88 and beyond do EFX parameters that do not appear to be in bassmidi. This mean ambitious compositions will sound more like dry recordings unless XG effects are used instead. Those DO work on SC88Pro, 8820, 8850, and BassMidi. There may be less options though.

Unfortunately it's not so simple. SC88Pro, 8820, 8850 are not XG compatible at all. They support GM/GM2/GS instead.
The rough equivalent of SC88Pro+ EFX parameters in XG systems are 'Variation effects'. Variation effects have 2 modes: Insertion and System. Both modes supports the same effects/variation types such as overdrive, distortion, compressor, Eq, AMP simulation etc. But they work differently. In insertion mode you can designate a part/channel where the effect should be active. This mode is not supported by Bassmidi at all. In system mode instead of a designated channel you can activate the effect by setting controller 94 (CC94) to the desired effect level. This mode is partly supported by bassmidi since you can associate a custom DSP/VST plugin with 'User Fx' CC94. So if you have a similar DSP/VST effect to the given XG effect you can imitate the sound.
In case of SC88Pro+ devices CC94 is also supported but the messages are interpreted differently. CC94 in SC88Pro+ sets the delay effect. So they are not compatible. Variation effects in Insertion mode are completely ignored by SC88Pro+ devices (as also other XG specific SysEx based effects).

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Reply 7 of 44, by stgiga

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That's a switch! I was told that the 88p and above have some support.

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Reply 8 of 44, by Falcosoft

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Here you can find the documentation of all Roland Sound Canvas devices with complete Midi implementation charts. XG as a Midi system is not even mentioned 😀
https://www.roland.com/us/support/manual_archive/
Also you can test with FSMP and Sound Canvas VA VSTi plugin. That's the most complete SC-8820/88Pro/88/55 implementation you can find in software form:
https://static.roland.com/assets/media/zip/sc … a_win_trial.zip
Topic:
Heads Up: Roland Sound Canvas VA VSTi Plugin!

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Reply 9 of 44, by stgiga

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No undocumented support... Dang... Now, for good news, I made a Yamaha FM Compilation bank, which is 320 MiB and has no issues, and sounds better than an OPL card imo. It is my other thread. THAT can be found here: My 320MiB Yamaha FM/Chiptune Compilation SoundFont

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Reply 11 of 44, by Falcosoft

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Spikey wrote:

SC-8820/50 supports basic XG, called "XG lite". I doubt effects are supported, not sure how many instruments are supported.

It seems to be an undocumented feature then. According to below forum post it's only an instrument remapping feature: https://hardforum.com/threads/old-school-sound.1700573/

the unit displays the instruments and drums in a different font than normal, and all the kits and instruments map to the XG standard. There is one caveat - if you touch the front panel, it COMPLETELY resets the unit, and all instruments become the default "Piano 1" patch. Quite annoying. And there's no way (that we know of) to access the XG tones. But, since it's not really XG (just renamed instruments that sound close to the real thing),

But Roland SC-VA even in SC-8820 mode does not react to XG reset or any other XG SysEx messages.

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Reply 12 of 44, by Spikey

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Yeah, the forum quote there is accurate. I guess it makes sense that it is remapping, although I am not sure if that is the case. There is SC-55 support in the Integra-7 and that is not instrument remapping, despite having the same conditions as XG lite- if you press a button, it changes back to a regular instrument.

Reply 13 of 44, by Falcosoft

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Spikey wrote:

Yeah, the forum quote there is accurate. I guess it makes sense that it is remapping, although I am not sure if that is the case. There is SC-55 support in the Integra-7 and that is not instrument remapping, despite having the same conditions as XG lite- if you press a button, it changes back to a regular instrument.

Maybe the Integra-7/SC-55 case is different somewhat since they are both Roland standards. XG is a competing standard from Yamaha with its own secrets for Roland 😀.

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Reply 14 of 44, by stgiga

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I have released a new UPDATE, probably the last one. I got rid of an AWE32 ROM Rip Clean Guitar (Seeing as GM already HAS a Clean Guitar, and the AWE32 was GM first with GS and MT32 as an afterthought, I really do not know WHY I even put it in, except for compatibility with LuckyMax's GM/GS/MT32 bank...), and that freed up JUST enough room to put in the most BAREBONES of SC-88Pro Cymbal&Claps Drumsets in, sampled from Robbi985's SC-88Pro Synth. I am now at 65,528 out of 65,534 Instrument generators filled. The page has also been updated AGAIN to clarify new APPS to use it with. Also, AWE32 ROMS do not play nicely with SF2 files, making glitches likely in older versions, and the addition of the Cymbal&Claps drum set has pushed the sample count to 11,000 and beyond. This means that once again a milestone release has arisen. I do have a somewhat buggy sc8850 Random Stereo Jazz kit from a weird Japanese FM/pcm imitation of the SoundCanvas line that for some reason was programmed completely bonkers, with volume and drum notes messed up inconsistently across the whole bank. When I found it, it came in pieces that I had to glue back together with Polyphone. And yet, the kit sounds no different to standard or jazz. As such, it will not be integrated, especially due to glitches, room, redundancy, and the fact that JAZZ L/R in my sf2 falls back to the better standard, plus normal Jazz is just standard in disguise so it would be pointless. I think I am done, though. Not only that, but the random samples of the 8850 cannot be reproduced in sf2. Again, why bother. Plus the FM samples are too fake for this HQ sf2.

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Reply 15 of 44, by stgiga

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Hello to all readers! I just updated the site AND soundfont! Please redownload the soundfont, AND check out the site!
I ended up having to fixing a bug in stereo separation relating to drumset bongos. This ended up reducing the effects of known glitches. Please reinstall this and check the site while doing so. Thanks for your patronage. Drums AND other known-glitched instruments sound better, if not fixed. there is a TL:DR warning associated, so beware!

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I use they/them. It can also be written as ᵺ㏟.

Reply 16 of 44, by stgiga

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Falcosoft wrote:
Hi, I have just tested your soundfont a little and it's generally quite good. Just a few observations: 1. The Orchestra (Symphon […]
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Hi,
I have just tested your soundfont a little and it's generally quite good. Just a few observations:
1. The Orchestra (Symphony in your sf2) drum set is too quiet compared to other drums/instruments. Good test files are Warcraft intro midi and Duke Nukem Futurmil.mid. Especially note E3(40) is too quiet. (I have used mainly Roland SC-VA as a reference)
2. It's good the soundfont has an MT-32 compatible bank so Dune1 and Monkey Island1 can be played with it, but in Monkey Island I have noticed that Bank MSB 127 Program 77 Panflute has a flawed loop since it stops completely after 4 seconds.
3. It would be good if at least the Capital tones/GM Bank instruments had real names instead of just numbers.

Besides I think the description on your website is a little bit deceptive:

It works with the Roland MT-32 and CM-32L, MMA General MIDI Level 1, Roland GS, Yamaha XGlite, Yamaha XG Level 1, MMA General MIDI 2, Roland SC-88, Roland SC-88 Pro, Roland SC-8820, Roland SC-8850, & Roland StudioCanvas* standards to at least some degree.

The thing is your soundfont is neither GM2 nor XG/XG Lite compatible. To be fair none of the SF2 files can be XG compatible. You have written:

Due to how patches are arranged as CC0 Bank Select MSB only, because of editor limits...,

But it's not an editor but format limitation. More info:
Soundfonts that mimic old hardware (SC-55, DX50XG, AWE64 Gold)
Even in XG lite Bank MSB+LSB addressing is mandatory since without Bank LSB support you can not have variation banks at all (only Melodic/Drum/Sfx banks by switching Bank MSB).

Explicit GM2 support requires Drum sets to be available at Bank MSB 120. It's easy to achieve if you want, you can simply map GS drum sets to this bank since it's empty now.
I know bassmidi emulates GM2 drums by mapping soundfont Bank 128 to Bank MSB 120 if you send a GM2 reset (and also does this in case of XG by mapping drum bank 128 to Bank MSB 127) but bassmidi does this with ANY soundfonts. So the truth is bassmidi itself is GM2/XG compatible in this respect, not your soundfont.
Bye

I finally got presets to add in beyond 1296, and I now have 1300 presets, in addition to a special feature you wanted: Names of Roland GS, SC-88 Series, and GM Tones.

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I use they/them. It can also be written as ᵺ㏟.

Reply 17 of 44, by lybxlpsv

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Yey my YAS Soundfont is now here and the instruments are named properly 😳 , thank you. that most likely take quite some time to do 😈
However if you continue this project, I propose to split the soundfont.

so usage would be like this on Droidsound-E for example :

dbanklsb=1|sc55.sf2
dbanklsb=2|sc88-drumkit.sf2
dbanklsb=3|sc88p-drumkit-choriumreva.sf2
dbanklsb=4|sc8820-drumkit.sf2
...other soundfonts

for XG you will need 2 soundfont, one for msb and one for lsb.
for example on DB50XG Soundfont on vogons, you edit out bank 0, sfx bank (put it into bank 64) and drumkits into file #1, then other instruments on file #2.

then on Droidsound-E, you do this

xg_msb.sf2
lsb=1|xg_lsb.sf2

this will map sf2 banks into lsb banks.

also since splitted soundfont is smaller, you can edit it with other soundfont editor that can't handle files more than 2GB like Polyphone and has virually unlimited presets/instruments/samples unlike when in 1 file.

sadly none of these lsb mapping stuff is standarized so this sflist will only work on Droidsound-E.

Reply 18 of 44, by stgiga

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lybxlpsv wrote:
Yey my YAS Soundfont is now here and the instruments are named properly :O , thank you. that most likely take quite some time t […]
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Yey my YAS Soundfont is now here and the instruments are named properly 😳 , thank you. that most likely take quite some time to do 😈
However if you continue this project, I propose to split the soundfont.

so usage would be like this on Droidsound-E for example :

dbanklsb=1|sc55.sf2
dbanklsb=2|sc88-drumkit.sf2
dbanklsb=3|sc88p-drumkit-choriumreva.sf2
dbanklsb=4|sc8820-drumkit.sf2
...other soundfonts

for XG you will need 2 soundfont, one for msb and one for lsb.
for example on DB50XG Soundfont on vogons, you edit out bank 0, sfx bank (put it into bank 64) and drumkits into file #1, then other instruments on file #2.

then on Droidsound-E, you do this

xg_msb.sf2
lsb=1|xg_lsb.sf2

this will map sf2 banks into lsb banks.

also since splitted soundfont is smaller, you can edit it with other soundfont editor that can't handle files more than 2GB like Polyphone and has virually unlimited presets/instruments/samples unlike when in 1 file.

sadly none of these lsb mapping stuff is standarized so this sflist will only work on Droidsound-E.

Thank you for the soundfont and your support of my extensions to it. Also you are welcome for naming the presets. It only took one day to do. It turns out some non-88pro presets and drumsets were present even before I added stuff. I do currently like having it as a single bank file so it works with the most software possible. I don't wanna make it work only on one platform, I want to make it work on all BASSMidi targets. I am using it to replace syxg50 and vsc. On Linux too. Not just android. I did resolve most mappings though. I did use heavy trickery to fit it all together, but I think it appears to approximate the files bundled with lybmidi. Plus you can use it in openmpt and forget about mapping issues. It also allows xg+mt+sc88pro at once, something impossible on hardware in exchange for using only effects that bass allows. I do notice that most stuff is covered when I play esoteric midi files. It all sounds like a decompressed edition of a sound canvas, with the xg and drums resembling fluid r3, and the mt32 being quiet due to it being a direct but cleaner sample from rom dumps. That said, i think 1300 presets and 65k instrument generators/parameters is a good stopping point for this bank atm. It is scarily accurate, but I would like to know the exact quality. This is larger in file size than the actual synth roms. Even on sc-d70 or Integra 7 iirc. The xg is larger too. Mt is definitely larger as well. The other stuff is unknown. For clarity, gm2 is a remapped version of the standard according to the bank charts for it that use no more than the first few banks instead of bank 121 only for gm2 patches. This was done because I could only find gm2 in the mapping I used. Also I had to map lsb to msb. This was due to the fact that Vienna doesn't handle lsb sf2 files despite behavior of other editors like awave studio, yamaha internal tools, and maybe polyphone/swami. I have more to say, but I have stuff to do. Thanks again.

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I use they/them. It can also be written as ᵺ㏟.

Reply 19 of 44, by stgiga

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I made another Roland soundfont, this time a gm mapped cm32l one:
My new 128mib CM32L GM/GS soundfont

It has some gs/xg/SC presets.

I'm Nonbinary and neurodivergent.
I use they/them. It can also be written as ᵺ㏟.