Re: [fluid-dev] Research: Fluidsynth as internal samplerfor Denemo

[David Henningsson]

address@hidden skrev:
> Hello list,
> 
> my Name is Nils and I'm in the Denemo Team (http://www.denemo.org)
> Denemo is a cross-plattform Notation Editor and Lilypond-Frontend.
> 
> I write you because I am researching if we can use fluidsynth as
> internal sampler and/or fallback-sampler. The goal is that our users
> without JACK, ALSA or whatever configured system can hear quite good
> sound output. They should not need to configure anything in the best
> case.

FluidSynth has native bindings to the most common sound APIs for that
platform. For Linux, one has to have either JACK, ALSA or OSS, and for
Windows, you need DirectSound (which is a part of Windows, so it's
nothing to worry about). On MacOSX, you need CoreAudio (which is a part
of MacOSX, so it's nothing to worry about).

> The question first, then additional information:
> Can we use fluidsynth internally without using JACK or ALSA or such API?
> Does fluidsynth has its own API?

Demeno doesn't have to access JACK/ALSA/Directsound/CoreAudio API's,
FluidSynth handles that for you. (There are modes for rendering to disk
or back to Demeno as well.)

As for the configuration issue, you will probably need to make a small
GUI to provide some configuration of FluidSynth.

> More Info:
> Currently our MIID-branch is in heavy development. We us libsmf to
> generate Midi-Data and use JACK-Midi to send midi data in realtime. To
> be honest we have quite a few problems and it is not working as
> expected. One reason is, that we have many old things in there (Denemo
> started in 1999): Direct calls to /dev/midi , a portaudio engine plus
> our own little sinus-tone generator, until recently a broken
> ALSA-sequencer and somewhere hidden there must be a C-Sound function
> which can be used to confuse users, too :)
> 
> To improve the current situation the first thing is to strip all  those
> dependencies mentioned and then establish a way which is simple and
> works on all Systems/OS's.

Just to clarify: FluidSynth can't help you with sending MIDI-data (to
external synthesizers or similar). It can take MIDI in, either from
Demeno or from its MIDI-in drivers. So you can use FluidSynth's MIDI
drivers to record MIDI from an external keyboard, but its output is
audio only.

> To repeat the question:
> Can we use fluidsynth as a sampler which can be used if JACK is not
> avaible? 

Yes, I think it sounds like a good idea.

> And how do we do that?

I would say: start with reading the API and look at the examples in the
doc directory. Or look at how other applications use FluidSynth. The
file src/fluidsynth.c demonstrates many of FluidSynth's features as well.
(And as Josh pointed out, get a decent sounding soundfont!)

And post back if you have any questions, and we'll try to help you out!

// David