[fluid-dev] Resonance Instrument Database

[Josh Green]

I wanted to announce the initial deployment of a web based instrument
database I've been working on.  The project was dormant for a couple
years, but now its coming back together again and I released the Python
source based project as GPL a few days ago (PatchesDB in Swami
subversion repository).

It still needs a bit of work and bandwidth may become an issue, since my
co-located server (that also hosts Swami and FluidSynth Trac installs)
is currently bandwidth limited, but we do have one other mirror for the
instruments (thanks to Marcus Planet!).  I'm populating it with free
content on the Internet, but this is still in progress.

Resonance Instrument Database:
http://sounds.resonance.org

Wiki page on features, etc:
http://swami.resonance.org/trac/wiki/PatchesDB

Comments welcome!

Features include:
- SoundFont, DLS and GigaSampler support
- Uses CRAM compression (instrument compression standard, part of
project Swami)
- Indexes all samples and instrument information in database
- Browse by category using sexy Blender rendered icons ;) (still missing
a couple)
- Register an account and submit your own content


My future thoughts for this database is to have direct browsing support
built into Swami for downloading/submitting instruments.  Also, I'm
looking into using WavPack for CRAM instead of FLAC.  WavPack performs
better in most cases, and also supports floating point and hybrid lossy
mode.  The latter feature would make it really cool to have a lossy
compressed instrument file, with another portion that could be
downloaded to make it lossless (the combined size is only a little
larger than if it was lossless to begin with).  This could act as a low
bandwidth preview in the future Swami instrument browsing experience.
That's probably a little ways off still, but, one can dream :)

Cheers!
        Josh Green