Re: [fluid-dev] Non-Realtime midi rendering? (fwd)

[Dik Takken]

I saw someone ask the same question as I did, and it appears the answer 
was only sent to me personally, not to the list.

So, here is the answer Josh sent me:


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:26:00 -0700
From: Josh Green <address@hidden>
To: Dik Takken <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: [fluid-dev] Non-Realtime midi rendering?

On Mon, 2004-10-04 at 14:55 +0200, Dik Takken wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I just ditched my Windows/SB-Live MIDI setup and replaced it with Gentoo,
> Rosegarden and FluidSynth. And I must say that I am really impressed by
> the sound quality of Fluidsynth. Using a software synth like FluidSynth
> provides the same output quality and solves a lot of problems of using
> hardware, like being stuck with an unstable OS with bad drivers. :) But it
> also introduces one new problem: CPU speed limitations.
>
> So I was just wondering if there is any way to render midi files without
> requiring the renderer (FluidSynth) to do it in real-time. You see, I own
> a 800 MHz Athlon machine, and it just can't keep up when playing a high
> quality piano soundfont and using the sustain pedal a lot. This isn't a
> disaster, because I can just reduce the quality of the output.
>
> Now I would like to re-render the recorded midi after playing it, using
> really high quality settings. Clearly, my computer can't do that in
> real-time, but I don't need it real-time. I don't care how long it takes
> to render it, as long as it gives me a high quality output file.
>
> Can FluidSynth do this? Are there any front-ends to FluidSynth that can?
>
> Cheers!
>
> Dik

This is a feature that I have been thinking about for some time.
Unfortunately FluidSynth cannot do this currently. It would be nice if
all the synthesis elements had various algorithms that trade off between
speed and quality (many of them already do). You could then turn down
the settings for playing a piece, then re-render the recorded MIDI using
higher quality settings and in non real time. This would also mean that
really expensive algorithms could also be used.

Development on FluidSynth has been somewhat slow as of late. I think in
the future though there will be renewed interest in its development.
I've been caught up in my own projects myself, so I haven't really
helped out much with FluidSynth.

I'm working on Swami/libInstPatch (http://swami.sourceforge.net) and
eventually I'm looking to integrate/interface this with GStreamer. So my
hope is to see FluidSynth become an element in a GStreamer multi-media
network, along with patch file formats like DLS, SF2, GUS, etc. So I
suppose I am working in other areas where FluidSynth plays a key role.
Eventually my own projects will hopefully stabilize somewhat, and I can
return to helping with FluidSynth. Cheers!

--
Josh Green <address@hidden>