K.A.R.R. wrote:

hello

i have a small problem with falcosoft midi player 5.3 and roland sound canvas va 1.13

Actually you have a problem with your file 😀. This problem is neither SC-VA nor MidiPlayer specific. If you try other players (WMP/Van Baco/GNMidi etc. + SAVIHost) with SC-VA or even with S-YXG50 you will hear that all play piano on all channels (except channel 10 drums). It's because this file is simply badly programmed. It contains/sends an SC-88 mode change SysEx message after all Program Change and Bank Select Controller messages are already sent. SC-88 mode change SysEx message works as a reset message for synths that support SC-88 specific messages (e.g. SC-VA and S-YXG50) so all previously sent channel messages are lost. SC-VA is known to have problems with displaying the real instrument state so its 'instruments on channels' display can be misleading. MidiPlayer shows right that the instruments are set to program 0 on all channels by the SysEx. I have fixed the file for you, also here's a picture about the original problematic SysEx:

hope this can be fixed, or is there a way to send a gs reset before playback starts ?

If you have GS selected in the right click context menu of the Reset button then GS reset is always sent before playback starts. But it cannot help here since the problem is the misplaced SysEx that is sent after playback starts.

but cakewalk music creator 7 plays the midi file with correct instruments

Cakewalk usually simply drops/ignores SysEx messages at midi import and you have to set special SysEx Banks to send them (so it's comparable to MidiPlayer with 'Enable SysEx in Files' set to disabled). Moreover AFAIK Cakewalk cannot send SysEx to VST instruments at all, only to external synths.

thx for the fixed midi file 😀

yep cakewalk works not very good with scva
many gs files will play like gm files with wrong instruments.

cubase should work better with scva
but to play midi files your player is perfect 😎

i have another small question about the karaoke text 😎

fs displays the karaoke text
1:1 when its played.
when you want to sing 😊 or just look at the text
it would be a bit more comfortable to follow the text if
the next text line would be shown before its played like with vanbasco.

thx and greets

Would it be possible for MidiPlayer to remember the volume level?
With SCVA anything higher than 50-60% volume will saturate/clip in a MIDI track that plays lots of channels loud at the same time (e.g. Game 2.mid from Descent 2).
After setting MidiPlayer to use SysEx for volume/balance it controls SCVA's volume correctly, but the volume is reset to 100% any time I quit and relaunch the program.
It would make things much easier if all I had to do was launch MidiPlayer before loading a game, and not have to do anything else.

There is a bug where the "Default Bank" setting resets to 1 even when it's 0 when you reopen the program. Please fix.

@K.A.R.R.:
To be honest Midi Text/Lyrics is rather for information in technical terms than for serious karaoke usage. Displaying meta text/lyrics in real time is more informative for me and I never wanted to sing along 😀

@Deep Thought:
MidiPlayer always remembered the player's own volume, but SysEx volume is a more tricky one since it's not the player's own volume but the the volume of the external synth/plugin. When the player starts e.g. SC-VA is not ready for several seconds so simply loading the saved volume and sending it to SC-VA at startup cannot work since the plugin is not even loaded yet.
But here is a version that sends the saved volume together with the first reset message that is sent to synth (this always happens at first load). But be aware that the player's volume level and SC-VA's volume level can go out of sync when the plugin is reloaded until a reset is sent or a new song is loaded (that sends a GS reset by default).
http://falcosoft.hu/midiplayer_54_test.zip

Anyway I could not reproduce your problem with Game 2.mid from Descent 2. SC-VA's volume even at 100% is so low compared to other synths that it never clips with any songs I have tried so far (BTW Midiplayer's volume meter shows when the signal is clipping but it never does in case of SC-VA).

And be aware that setting the volume of SC-VA with SysEx messages is not without risk.
SC-VA has a bug/problem: channels that use insertion effects do not change their volume proportionally with other channels and this results in an unbalanced sound. Here's an example that shows this problem when you change the synth's internal volume either with SysEx messages or with the plugin's own volume control:
http://falcosoft.hu/grabbag_sc88pro_falcomod.zip

So I think in case of SC-VA it is best to set the volume of the final mix ('Use SysEx volume' is not checked in Device Settings dialog).

@DevanWolf:
OK, It's fixed now. Download location is above.

Falcosoft wrote:

@Deep Thought: MidiPlayer always remembered the player's own volume, but SysEx volume is a more tricky one since it's not the pl […]
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@Deep Thought:
MidiPlayer always remembered the player's own volume, but SysEx volume is a more tricky one since it's not the player's own volume but the the volume of the external synth/plugin. When the player starts e.g. SC-VA is not ready for several seconds so simply loading the saved volume and sending it to SC-VA at startup cannot work since the plugin is not even loaded yet.
But here is a version that sends the saved volume together with the first reset message that is sent to synth (this always happens at first load). But be aware that the player's volume level and SC-VA's volume level can go out of sync when the plugin is reloaded until a reset is sent or a new song is loaded (that sends a GS reset by default).
http://falcosoft.hu/midiplayer_54_test.zip

That does seem to work, thank you.

Falcosoft wrote:

Anyway I could not reproduce your problem with Game 2.mid from Descent 2. SC-VA's volume even at 100% is so low compared to other synths that it never clips with any songs I have tried so far (BTW Midiplayer's volume meter shows when the signal is clipping but it never does in case of SC-VA).

Using the Voxengo SPAN VST to monitor playback, it reported 600+ instances of clipping across both channels with that track at 100% volume.
At 80% volume this drops to only clipping twice. So it doesn't actually have to be reduced as far as I thought (I think I had my VST priority wrong before, as it's reversed from what I expected) though it's possible that other tracks may play more channels simultaneously at high volumes than that track. It's just one that I know can cause or come close to clipping.

I'm not certain, but it's possible that SPAN is checking for inter-sample clipping rather than sample clipping, if it's reporting clipping while MidiPlayer is not.
If that's the case, reducing the output volume level by 3-6 dB should prevent it rather than having to adjust SC-VA's volume level.

Falcosoft wrote:

And be aware that setting the volume of SC-VA with SysEx messages is not without risk. SC-VA has a bug/problem: channels that us […]
Show full quote

And be aware that setting the volume of SC-VA with SysEx messages is not without risk.
SC-VA has a bug/problem: channels that use insertion effects do not change their volume proportionally with other channels and this results in an unbalanced sound. Here's an example that shows this problem when you change the synth's internal volume either with SysEx messages or with the plugin's own volume control:
http://falcosoft.hu/grabbag_sc88pro_falcomod.zip

So I think in case of SC-VA it is best to set the volume of the final mix ('Use SysEx volume' is not checked in Device Settings dialog).

I was not aware of that problem, and it seems that volume would be best left at 100% no matter what. That's frustrating.
I've also found that sample rate needs to either be set to 32kHz, or a low-pass filter around 14.5-15kHz needs to be used at higher sample rates with SC-VA. I haven't found a good low-latency option for that to use with games though, only music playback (the free ReaFIR plug-in works for that).

Falcosoft wrote:

SC-VA is known to have problems with displaying the real instrument state so its 'instruments on channels' display can be misleading.

That is because the instrument and status displays operate independent from the synthesizer core, which is a monolithic library that implements a static single instance of SCVA, with no status information whatsoever exposed, save for polyphony, which is hard limited to 64 voices per instance, and boy does it love to leave voices occupied as far as that counter is concerned.

The status display is controlled by the instrument front end monitoring and interpreting messages separate from the synthesizer. In fact, even the instrument changes and synthesizer mode controls are all implemented by sending midi and sysex messages to the black box core. Fun fact: the core doesn’t support specifying the length of sysex messages, and the front end doesn’t verify that messages are terminated before passing them to the core, so great way to make the plugin crash!

@kode54:
Thanks for the interesting info about the inner working of SC-VA. The situation where I have met the front-end display and synth core can go out of sync problem is orphan Bank select controller messages. The front-end display reacts to Bank select messages immediately while the core only reacts to Bank select when a Program change message also arrives. Fortunately the synth's core is right (according to midi specification) so the synth sounds good only the displayed bank/instrument is wrong. And based on K.A.R.R.'s problematic file it can be stated that some SysEx messages also interpreted correctly only by the synth's core and ignored by the front-end.

Hi,
version 5.4 of FSMP is released. The test zips are no longer available.
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#midiplayer

version 5.4

1. Added midi key numbers to right click display on virtual keyboard.
2. Added clipping indicator to volume ladder.
3. Added left/right arrow hotkeys to forward/rewind 5 sec. during playback.
4. Added SF2 XG drum bank support in XG mode (BASS_MIDI_FONT_XGDRUMS flag is set if bank 127 proves to be a drum bank).
5. Added special low latency mode in case of WASAPI output (set buffer to 10ms to enable).
6. Added fixes for overlapping and orphan loop points.
7. Added separate PitchBend filter to DebugForm.
8. Maximum supported channels are extended to 64 in Bassmidi mode.
9. When started with /tray command line parameter close button minimizes app back to system tray.
10. SysEx volume/balance settings are saved and restored.
11. Fixed 'Default Bank' setting always resets to 1 after restart.
12. Other minor fixes and enhancements.

Hi,
On a Hungarian forum some users complained that their Midi keyboard/synth hardware does not provide a fast way to change patches. So I was asked to implement some quickly available hotkeys for patch changes. Single key hotkeys has the inherent problem of controls that react to them. F1-F12 would have been the ideal choice but they are already reserved for octave changes for PC keyboard. So I have chosen numeric keys 0..9. Unfortunately some controls of Midiplayer react to these numeric keys, so you have to make sure not to select such controls (Program selector, Bank MSB, Bank LSB input field etc.) for these hotkeys to work. The easiest way is to select e.g. the playlist, Volume, Balance, Seek bar on Midi player's interface before using these single numeric hotkeys.
There is a new menu item directly available from the main menu called: 'Patch Change Hotkeys' where you can enable and define these special hotkeys.
If you enable (enabled by default) 'Send messages to selected Channel of Main form' then the defined patch change message's channel will be relative, the message will be always sent to the actual channel selected by the 'Channel' control on the main interface of the player. If this checkbox is disabled then the message's channel will be absolute as given in the configuration dialog, and independent from the 'Channel' control's value on the main interface of the player.
I have also defined some fixed hotkeys for changing programs:

Ctrl+ Up -> Program +1
Ctrl+ Down -> Program -1
Ctrl+ PageUp -> Program +8
Ctrl+ PageDown -> Program -8

+/-8 may seem strange at first, but both melodic channel groups and drum channel Drum kits are at this distance:
Melodic Channels:
Pianos: 0..7
Chromatic Percussions: 8..15
Organs: 16..23
Guitars: 24..31
Basses: 32..39
etc.

Drum Channel:
Standard Kit: 0
Room Kit: 8
Power Kit: 16
Electronic Kit: 24
Jazz Kit: 32
Brush Kit: 40
Orchestra: 48
etc.

Test version can be downloaded from:
http://falcosoft.hu/midiplayer_55_test.zip

bye

I'm having a strange issue with the MIDIPlayer in Windows 7 lately; whenever I launch the program I get the following error:

Directsound capture error. Only Bass vumeter/recording will work.

I can't seem to record anything, although playback is fine. Any ideas what may give? Same issue with 5.3 32-bit, 5.4 32-bit, 5.4 64-bit.

appiah4 wrote:

I'm having a strange issue with the MIDIPlayer in Windows 7 lately; whenever I launch the program I get the following error:

Directsound capture error. Only Bass vumeter/recording will work.

I can't seem to record anything, although playback is fine. Any ideas what may give? Same issue with 5.3 32-bit, 5.4 32-bit, 5.4 64-bit.

This part of the code has not changed lately so I do not think different versions make any difference.
This error message means that the selected recording source/port failed to initialize with the requested format (44 kHz 16-bit stereo). So you should check in Midiplayer's Device Settings dialog -> Recording Source part what source/port is selected and if the selected one supports the required 44 kHz 16-bit stereo format.
1. If you have Primary recording driver selected in MidiPlayer (default) make sure that in Recording Devices control panel of Windows the default recording device is the right one and it supports the required format.
2. You can also try to select explicitly the right recording source/port in MidiPlayer's Recording Source combo list box (In case of internal soft synths select Stereo Mix/What you hear, in case of external synths select the Line-in port where your external synth's audio output is attached to).
After above done restart MidiPlayer since it do not try to initialize Directsound capture after this error until next start.

Strange, Midi Player was set to use Primary Sound Capture Driver, so I went to Recording Devices and there was only Microphone and Line In, no Stereo Mix. I reinstalled the Realtek drivers and DirectX and now I have Stereo Mix as an option, which was 16-bit 48KHz by default so I set that to 16-bit 44KHz. This resolved nothing, regardless of which recording source I select in Midi Player.

appiah4 wrote:

Strange, Midi Player was set to use Primary Sound Capture Driver, so I went to Recording Devices and there was only Microphone and Line In, no Stereo Mix. I reinstalled the Realtek drivers and DirectX and now I have Stereo Mix as an option, which was 16-bit 48KHz by default so I set that to 16-bit 44KHz. This resolved nothing, regardless of which recording source I select in Midi Player.

I also have Realtek integrated audio + Win7 x64 on one of my test PCs and everything works perfectly so I do not think there is a general problem with such configs.
As a last attempt you should check that some other audio application is not using your recording devices exclusively (some ASIO drivers like ASIO4ALL can cause such problems).
Have you ever succeeded in recording on this system? If yes, you should try to restore an earlier configuration of your Win7 (the disappeared Stereo Mix can be a sign of system/driver changes e.g. by Windows update).

I previously recorded without issues.

I think I know what is wrong.. Not long ago I accidentally installed an S-YXG50 soft synth driver on this system by mistake (I meant to open the installer as an archive, but double clicked, and it was set to autoinstall so it installed crap before I could intervene..) so I went ahead and uninstalled it using Yamaha's own S-YXG uninstaller program (as it did not appear in Add/remove programs).

I have no idea what kind of crap it installed and what it deleted, so here I am, probably with a completely messed up sound config.

I will try to revert to a configuration before I made the stupid mistake (*curse*)

Hi,
version 5.5 of FSMP is released. The test zips are no longer available.
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#midiplayer

version 5.5

1. Added '2x Window Size' option to context menu of Visualization(Spectrum & Channels) dialog to get bigger/better quality display.
2 .Added optimization to midi files that do not leave enough time for notes to decay at end of song ('Pause between Songs' should be enabled in Playlist's context menu).
3. Added 'Automatically apply solo/mute to selected Channel' button next to solo/mute buttons.
If it is switched on together with solo/mute buttons changing channels automatically applies the solo/mute state to selected channel.
4. Added hotkeys for changing programs real-time: Ctrl+ Up -> Program +1, Ctrl+ Down -> Program -1, Ctrl+ PageUp -> Program +8, Ctrl+ PageDown -> Program -8.
5. Also added hotkeys (0..9) to select user definable patches.
There is a new menu item directly available from the main menu called: 'Patch Change Hotkeys' where you can enable and define these special hotkeys. More info:
Falcosoft Soundfont Midi Player + Munt VSTi + BassMidi VSTi
6. Fixed changing octave when chord mode is on can result in hanging notes problem (Virtual piano/Midi In).
7. Updated Bass/Bassmidi libraries.
8. Other minor fixes and enhancements.

Hi,

I've been using your MIDI Player for many years now - great program, very flexible, use it to play everything. I posted here before with a concept drawing of a 16-track version of your player, possible but not easy I guess....😀 You sure keep busy cramming in more and more improvements, getting better every day!

I have a (small) suggestion. Is there a way to make the Pedal (Controller 64) button a 'momentary' button? Such as, it only stays down as long as you hold down the L-mouse button, and then releases when the mouse button is released? Even better, could it be tied into the space-bar, so that, maybe after clicking it once for focus, you could use the space-bar for a pedal, without having to double-press it to turn it on and off.

This would be great for those times when I have a MIDI keyboard hooked up, and play into MIDI Player, but can't connect / don't have a pedal handy. This way I could just throw a USB keyboard on the floor and use my toe on the space-bar for the pedal, for example....🤣....😀

I'm going to really like the new 2x window size feature, what an Excellent Program!

Thanks for all your hard work - Cheers!

Bellarmine

bellarmine wrote:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

Hi,

I have a (small) suggestion. Is there a way to make the Pedal (Controller 64) button a 'momentary' button? Such as, it only stays down as long as you hold down the L-mouse button, and then releases when the mouse button is released? Even better, could it be tied into the space-bar, so that, maybe after clicking it once for focus, you could use the space-bar for a pedal, without having to double-press it to turn it on and off.

Thanks for all your hard work - Cheers!

Bellarmine

Hi,
Unfortunately the space-bar is already reserved for play/pause function (as an app-global hotkey) and I hate breaking changes (not to mention play/pause is a more frequently used function than your suggested one).
I can offer you the Caps Lock key for this task. It would have the advantage that no click to focus would be required to use it since nothing reacts to Caps Lock by default so it could be an 'app-global' hotkey. Also its name predestines this key for a task like this 😀
Is it appropriate for you?

Thanks very much, Caps Lock would be ok! As long as you could make it momentary, i.e., on only as long as Caps Lock is held down, and releases when Caps Lock is released (like a real pedal..... 😀

Had forgotten about the space-bar for play/pause. You're right, you don't want to change that, that is way too useful (seriously... 😀

I had another idea, maybe even simpler: When you L-click the pedal button, it locks/stays down (like now). But how about when you R-Click the button, it only stays down as long as the R-button is pressed. I have a cheap USB Mouse with a switch wired to the R-mouse button. This way, just put the cursor over the pedal button and use the switch for pedal.

Thanks for your idea, and hope my additional idea is helpful, I appreciate it!

Cheers!

Bellarmine

Ok, I have added button-local right click mouse + app-global Caps Lock sustain functions. Be aware that Caps Lock system global function cannot be disabled so it always also switches Caps Lock status when you press it (I know it's not ideal but no other single key shortcut remained to use).
http://falcosoft.hu/midiplayer_56_test.zip