Re: [Rosegarden-user] timidity and rosegarden

[SlowPic <sl...@we...>]

Silvan schrieb:
>>* You need soundfonts, put it in a directory of choice and
>>   refer to it with the "-L" parameter as shown
> 
> Depending on your distro, you (he) may be able to install something called 
> "freepats" and use that with no need to specify anything manually.  That 

It's true what you are saying. OTOH you have no real control
about which SoundFont file will be used by Timidity, following
the entries in the timidity.cfg file. I prefer selection of
well defined sound fonts for the work with a particular file
in Rosegarden.

Rosegarden offers the option to preload a particular sound font,
though and it offers bank import for the names. I have all my
soundfonts in "SoundFonts.cfg" and all but one are commented.
I put a copy of this file in whatever music project directory
I want to work.

Then, I change to that directory and start my script
"rosegarden-sound-gui" which restarts timidity with the locally
available SoundFonts.cfg configuration file. As I said, there
is only one active entry, all others are commented with "#".

> works here, on Debian Sid.  Results will probably vary, but "freepats" is 
> probably available as a package for other distros too.  It's also the closest 
> thing extant to a free soundfont.

Concerning sound quality, it's important what you're after.
In my case, I need some good sounding natural instruments
like Violin, Cello, Oboe and such. I found some good ones
and mixed them together in a custom sound font, so I have
all sounds at hands in a (IMO) good quality.

> Can Timidity use .sf2 soundfonts as well?  This "freepats" thing is a 
 > collection of GUS patches, and I have always operated under the impression
 > that Timidity is basically a GUS (Gravis UltraSound) emulator.  Perhaps this
 > has been an erroneous assumption.

Yes, Timidity can use .sf2 fonts. This is the main reason
I had no need for GUS patches. Well, it depends on what
you need. The mentioned classical instruments were available
in good quality as *.SF2 only ..... for free, certainly :)

Regards,
Frank