[fluid-dev] FluidSynth & Audiality - common goals

[David Olofson]

Hi!


I'm new around here, but I've been on, LAD and music-dsp, SDL and a 
few other lists for a good while, so I guess some of you have seen me 
wasting quite some bandwidth before. ;-)

Anyway, I'm the author of Audiality; the (formerly unnamed) audio 
engine of Kobo Deluxe.

        http://audiality.org

Audiality is a sound and music engine using MIDI files and a custom 
modular synthesis based sound format. The net result is that it can 
deliver high quality sound from extremely small files. (A song with 
only synthetic sounds is in the 2-10 kB range, bzip2 compressed.)


So, why am I bugging you guys!?

Well, first, I want to say: Great work! :-) I think I just found the 
"bread'n'butter" synth, and sampler, for my virtual studio. Sounds 
good, works great, and it's LGPL - perfect!

I generally prefer creating sounds from scratch; virtual analog 
synthesis, physical modelling etc. (And even more so after getting 
started with Audiality - it's so much easier to get that right sound 
than it is on h/w sampleplayers.) However, SoundFonts are great for 
"the rest", and there are plenty of good ones out there, both free 
and commercial. Having a good SF2 soft synth is great, especially 
since I'm aiming at dropping the hardware synths entirely. I've been 
thinking about getting some big E-mu sampler or something - but I'd 
rather spend the money on "generic" hardware, as in a big, phatt SMP 
audio server.

I want a 100% Free/Open Source (WRT software), native processing 
studio that completely covers my needs from idea to finished media, 
and it doesn't seem to be all that far away.


Second, I noticed you have a C version of Freeverb... And it just 
happens I could use a fast, tuned and ready to use reverb in 
Audiality! (I've played around with reverbs of my own, but I don't 
really have the time for countless hours of reverb tuning at this 
point...) Would you mind?

I haven't looked at the chorus yet, but I don't have one in Audiality 
yet, so I might be interested in that one as well.


Finally, I might as well counter the usual "why don't you join forces" 
argument before it gets going. It seems that FluidSynth and Audiality 
have very similar backgrounds (both started as part of a game or 
similar project), and they seem to have similar goals and intended 
uses (games, multimedia and studios) - but I think there are some 
important differences:

        * FluidSynth uses SF2, while Audiality uses a custom,
          non-standard sound format. This means Audiality
          isn't restricted by any standard, but it also means
          there are no standard editing tools. (Well, apart
          from text editors. ;-)

        * FluidSynth may use hardware acceleration, whereas
          Audiality cannot. Audiality's use of a highly
          configurable FX processing network may give it an
          edge when it comes to getting the mix just right,
          but it also means it depends on it's own native
          processing code.

        * Audiality was designed with the content creator's
          freedom, and accurate reproduction in mind.
          Usability and results are considered more important
          than standards. In that regard, Audiality is very
          far from GM/GS/XG, and very close to MOD/XM/IT/IXS
          and other "module" formats.


Well, the level of cooperation is still open for discussion, of 
course, but I believe it's hard to take it much further than some 
code reuse. (Though I doubt there's much of interest to you in 
Audiality, so it ain't even fair! ;-)


Regards, and again, thanks for a great synth!


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

.- The Return of Audiality! --------------------------------.
| Free/Open Source Audio Engine for use in Games or Studio. |
| RT and off-line synth. Scripting. Sample accurate timing. |
`-----------------------------------> http://audiality.org -'
   --- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---