[Alsa-user] Wavetable synths and Alsa (Was: A "dumb" MIDI keyboard,...)

[Frank B. <f.b...@cs...>]

Frank Barknecht wrote:

> timidity or iiwusysnth are quite good for general purpose Midi, and
> you should be able to use any software synth to play with a midi
> keyboard, i.e. Csound, PD, Spiral Synth Modular, ...

I have recently experimented a lot with software syths and sequencers (I
have no external midi hardware yet). At least for me, it has turned out
that a decent wavetable synth is essential. The reason is that those
soundfonts or patches have been tuned over years by people with good
hearing. It seems nearly impossible to create equally good sounding
natural instruments without using sampled data. Therefore, timidity or
iiwusynth should be used (perhaps among others).

Comparing these two, I found (at least for me) that timidity with the
famous eawpatches cannot be beaten by iiwusynth, although I tried loads
of different soundfonts. This is sort of pity, because iiwusynth seems
to be better supported by sequencer software under linux. I know that I
can connect timidity to muse or rosegarden but, for example, in muse you
couldn't use the downmixer and changing instruments from within muse
seems to be buggy. The connection rosegarden-timidity works better but I
think muse currently offers better features.

I would therefore like to use iiwusynth but can anybody point me to a
really good soundfont for gerneral purposes (strings, piano, brass,...)?


Frank

-- 
Dr Frank Boehme                      | Email: f.b...@cs...
National University of Ireland, Cork | phone: +353-21-4903163
Dept of Computer Science             |   fax: +353-21-4903113
Cork, Ireland                        |