midis, fluidsynth, bassmidi, timidity etc

I'm a windows 7 user, so obviously for me, getting any source ports midi to sound properly is going to be difficult. I mainly use risen3d and zdoom. bassmidi doesn't always seem to work in risen3d, and also is very flaky in zdoom as well. Timidity stops working in zdoom every few levels. Fluidsynth seems to work ok, but only works in zdoom. I've tried using the bassmidi config program and the vista midi picker, but the settings never seem to "stick". Is there any difference between using a soundfont in fluidsynth compared to the other two? Should it sound the same? I'm not using the weeds gm3 soundfont, but one that's about 250 meg - I know that weeds is meant to sound best for doom midis, but most pwads' new midis sound better to me with the one 250mb one. I think that sometimes timidity and fluidsynth "slip" back to using the weeds soundfont, too, because I sometimes have trouble telling the difference.

I use Windows 7 and have the same problems with the MIDI things and source ports.

As for if the different MIDI synths sound different, I'm pretty sure that soundfont quality depends on what is used to play the soundfont. For example, the Synth Strings 2 in Weeds GM sound much better with Bassmidi than with Timidity.

I do not know exactly how to fix this, although you could not use any extra MIDI synth and let it use the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW synth instead, but that sounds horrible.

TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

I use Windows 7 and have the same problems with the MIDI things and source ports.

As for if the different MIDI synths sound different, I'm pretty sure that soundfont quality depends on what is used to play the soundfont. For example, the Synth Strings 2 in Weeds GM sound much better with Bassmidi than with Timidity.

I do not know exactly how to fix this, although you could not use any extra MIDI synth and let it use the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW synth instead, but that sounds horrible.

I'm considering buying a cheap sound card that supports soundfonts in hardware in windows 7. Would a sound card with soundfont support sound any different to bassmidi/timidity? I thought if anything, it would sound better.

invictius said:

I'm considering buying a cheap sound card that supports soundfonts in hardware in windows 7. Would a sound card with soundfont support sound any different to bassmidi/timidity? I thought if anything, it would sound better.

Depending on the soundcard and driver versions, hardware soundfont support often has clicks and dropped notes. That is, there are polyphony limits that may result in some notes not being played and clicks in certain songs/instruments (although I have also heard clicks with some software synths). Hardware soundfont reproduction is also variable.

Another software synth is Synthfont, a series of synths including a music sequencer/MIDI player and a program that installs as a system-wide MIDI synthesizer. I have the sequencer version, and some instruments sound a little weaker than on other soft synths. However, I haven't tried the system synth version, but supposedly it is the same quality as hardware synths/soundfont soundcards, but without the dropped notes and glitches.

Also be aware that hardware soundfont players/soundcards have size limits. Soft synths can load soundfonts over a GB in size, but some soundcards cannot even load soundfonts over 32 MB. It is possible for a soundcard to load large soundfonts with a Windows registry edit, but even that only allows up to 384 MB soundfonts to be used.

When I was putting together a spec for my current machine a couple of years ago, I was recommended by a number of people to not bother with a separate sound card because "the ones on motherboards these days are good enough" and "you don't need a separate sound card unless you are doing something really technical with music". So, I specified a machine using the on-board RealTek sound system.

Almost immediately I realised that doing so was a mistake and I was having sound issues that I had not experienced since before I bought my first Sound Blaster card "back in the day". I went out and got myself a Creative X-Fi Titanium and I have not had a significant sound related problem yet, other than the ability to record "What-U-Hear" doesn't seem to be supported in Win 7.

So, personally, I am still a big fan of buying a reasonable quality add-on sound card rather than relying on the on-board system.

invictius said:

I'm considering buying a cheap sound card that supports soundfonts in hardware in windows 7

These are all pretty much conflicting and/or mutually exclusive requirements.

Enjay said:

other than the ability to record "What-U-Hear" doesn't seem to be supported in Win 7.

In case you're still having that problem: http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm

Very reliable, easy to setup and totally worth a try if you can't make it work any other way.

Enjay said:[...]

I had the opposite experience. Having always used onboard sound, in 2010 I decided to listen to people saying a dedicated sound card would allow for significantly better sounding stuff overall, and bought a new computer with one.... A Creative X-Fi Titanium.

Couldn't notice a single difference in sound quality. However, the card had major problems on my system (apparently caused by Windows 7 and drivers), there would be loud crackles every now and then emitting from my speakers. After days of browsing the Internet and trying dozens of fixes without anything ever working, I gave up and ditched the card. Sound still sounds as good, no more issues.

I use an Auzentech X-Fi Forte on Windows 7 (64-bit) and haven't had a single problem with it. Auzentech marry their own board designs and driver's with the Creative X-Fi chipset. If you want to go a stage further then the X-Meridian 7.1 2G might be a good choice.

Today, shelling out money for an expensive soundcard will at most get you a better DAC/ADC combo, but if you expect that somehow there will be super-magic DSP and hardware wavetable synthesizers get ready for a major disappointment: either they won't be there at all (there are $200 sound cards that have the very same C-media chips you have on your mobo, maybe with better connectivity and DACs/ADCs), or will be locked behind broken drivers (Creative....) so it's doubly pointless endeavor.

What exactly do you need the sound card for? general-purpose high quality audio playback? high quality sampling? retro-quality sampling? high quality audio for modern video games? high quality audio for older video games? low-latency audio for midi, emulators, data acquisition software and the like? there's not a single combination of sound card + drivers in the market that can handle it all, so the wise thing to do here is to settle for the one best suited for the task you consider to be the most important.

Porsche Monty said:

In case you're still having that problem: http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm

Very reliable, easy to setup and totally worth a try if you can't make it work any other way.

Thanks, I've downloaded the trial and I'm giving it a go. It certainly works but I have to say I found it a little fiddly to set up and use in the way I want with the various bits of software I use but I will persevere.

Most of the time, all I want to do is record a short bit of sound being played by the system and then use sound editing software to mess around with it. I have actually found a bit of a messy work around - if I run FRAPS and set it to record a video of something in the background (usually just something running on media player) and then pause whatever FRAPS is recording, I can then produce the system sounds that I want to grab and then load the captured video into the audio editing software.

I've already gone through all the options and "things to try" from various forums for my Creative card and, like most of the people on those forums with the same specific set of circumstances as me, haven't managed to get "What-U-Hear" working.

Enjay said:

Thanks, I've downloaded the trial and I'm giving it a go. It certainly works but I have to say I found it a little fiddly to set up and use in the way I want with the various bits of software I use but I will persevere.

Most of the time, all I want to do is record a short bit of sound being played by the system and then use sound editing software to mess around with it. I have actually found a bit of a messy work around - if I run FRAPS and set it to record a video of something in the background (usually just something running on media player) and then pause whatever FRAPS is recording, I can then produce the system sounds that I want to grab and then load the captured video into the audio editing software.

I've already gone through all the options and "things to try" from various forums for my Creative card and, like most of the people on those forums with the same specific set of circumstances as me, haven't managed to get "What-U-Hear" working.

Most hardware does support a "What-U-Hear" (although due to Microsoft it might decrease decrease) but no OEM vendors that make drivers for their sound cards are allowed to expose it. Also Windows goes out of its way to disable any potential "What-U-Hear" options for the point of piracy protection. They don't want you recording live streams or playing back copyrighted DRMed music files because that would make them lose money. Not to mention that Microsoft is in all of the entertainment studio's pockets so that Microsoft can gain as a business since they will use their own pockets to "protect" their junk.

You can do it in Linux though with JACK or ALSA (JACK comes with a gui where you can do all kinds of stuff, although recording what you hear is a bit delayed due to latency but that depends on your settings).

Or you can connect your stereo out to another system that has stereo in (and can actually record 2 channels) and use a nice and thick gold plated cable with pure copper wire.

GhostlyDeath said:

Also Windows goes out of its way to disable any potential "What-U-Hear" options for the point of piracy protection.

Seriously, fuck them.

Maes said:
Seriously, fuck them.

I have a handful of cassettes with audio streams in RealAudio (and maybe Quicktime) that were recorded in this way in the mid-1990s. The tape deck even looks similar, except it's a Hitachi :-)

GhostlyDeath said:

Most hardware does support a "What-U-Hear" (although due to Microsoft it might decrease decrease) but no OEM vendors that make drivers for their sound cards are allowed to expose it. Also Windows goes out of its way to disable any potential "What-U-Hear" options for the point of piracy protection. They don't want you recording live streams or playing back copyrighted DRMed music files because that would make them lose money. Not to mention that Microsoft is in all of the entertainment studio's pockets so that Microsoft can gain as a business since they will use their own pockets to "protect" their junk.

Yes, as is standard these days, "What-U-Hear" was hidden by default. I unhid it, set it as the default recording input, tweaked with all sorts of settings etc etc etc. Eventually I came across a few sites where people had done the same as me and the bottom line seems to be that there actually is a problem. If you unhide and enable "What-U-Hear", it should work but with some card/driver/OS combinations it doesn't. It has been reported to Creative but, probably for the reasons you allude to, there seems to be no impetus for Creative to fix the problem. So it goes unfixed.

I have also tried a program called Total Recorder. It worked but it introduced some instability to my system so I removed it again.

GhostlyDeath said:

Or you can connect your stereo out to another system that has stereo in (and can actually record 2 channels) and use a nice and thick gold plated cable with pure copper wire.

Heh, yes, I have resorted to that before now too.

The whole "anti-piracy" reason for this amuses me though. There are far easier, far better, far more reliable methods to pirate sounds/music that get better results and many people use them. If I wanted to pirate some music or whatever, I think that using "What-U-Hear" would be the last option that I would try.

Enjay said:

Thanks, I've downloaded the trial and I'm giving it a go. It certainly works but I have to say I found it a little fiddly to set up and use in the way I want with the various bits of software I use but I will persevere.

Most of the time, all I want to do is record a short bit of sound being played by the system and then use sound editing software to mess around with it. I have actually found a bit of a messy work around - if I run FRAPS and set it to record a video of something in the background (usually just something running on media player) and then pause whatever FRAPS is recording, I can then produce the system sounds that I want to grab and then load the captured video into the audio editing software.

I've already gone through all the options and "things to try" from various forums for my Creative card and, like most of the people on those forums with the same specific set of circumstances as me, haven't managed to get "What-U-Hear" working.

Here's a shortcut. Create a single cable in the VAC control panel, default settings (not the best but they can be tweaked to allow bit-perfect recordings in most cases) then go to Win7's sound panel where you get to choose your "Playback" and "Recording" devices and make "Virtual Cable 1" the default for both of them.

If done correctly, you should be able to record anything that would normally play back through the speakers using any application, even Win7's primitive sound recording tool.

There's a catch, though, you won't be able to hear anything (even what you're currently recording) until you change the playback device back to whatever you were using before. This can normally be circumvented, but it can be a little trickier.