[fluid-dev] MIDI piano + sustain pedal realism

[S.]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the world of MIDI, although I've used Linux for a really long time. 
Anything that I do with a computer I pretty much require that it works with 
Linux or else I'm not interested. I've played piano most of my life and I've 
recently been looking into a fairly realistic and inexpensive way to go 
digital. So I recently bought a slightly used M-AUDIO 88es at a great price, 
and I connected it to an old laptop running openSUSE Leap 15.0 . Basically, I 
was able to plugin in the controller/keyboard and connect it to a software 
synthesizer via qjackctl, and I am able to play music. So that's the important 
part. :-) Now there are just a few oddities and bugs I'm running into, mostly 
relating to the naturalness of the sustain pedal behavior with anything that 
uses FluidSynth (qsynth or SF2 Player in LMMS):

1. The sustain pedal works, but not like a real piano. After hitting some keys, 
releasing the keys, and then immediately depressing the sustain pedal while 
there is still residual resonant sound, it does not sustain the resonant sound. 
At least, it normally doesn't-- but for a short period I was constantly 
switching back and forth between qsampler and qsynth and restarting Jack, and 
at some point the sustain pedal starting acting like a real piano under qsynth, 
sustaining the resonant sound after releasing keys. ?!?!?! But I can't repeat 
it now.

2. I really like the Yamaha Salamander soundfont from SoundFonts4U, but it 
appears that FluidSynth doesn't reproduce the sustain pedal release noises that 
some of the instruments have there, which I would really like to have. Is this 
an SF2 format limitation or a FluidSynth limitation?

Any other options or tips or workarounds? Thanks in advance!