[fluid-dev] Soundfont banks (was: Re: OSC support)

[David Henningsson]

On 07/09/2012 03:07 PM, jimmy wrote:
>     "SoundBlaster soundfont specs only allow 128 banks of 128 instruments"  --  
> That's what I get from Pedro and David.
> When ask about MIDI specs support for MSB (128 selections) and LSB (128 
> selections) for sound banks, they didn't have an answer.

As for following specs or not, I'm pragmatic about it. I'd like to 
follow the specs whenever possible, but if something else proves useful 
to a lot of people, and does not break it for other people, I'm okay 
with merging such patches.

As for soundfonts, I remember having discussions on how to best map CC0 
and CC32 to the SoundFont's wBank value in different GM/GS/XG/GM2 modes, 
which was not trivial to answer. Therefore we have the 
"synth.midi-bank-select" option that uses different mappings depending 
the mode you select. Isn't that option working for you?

As for the soundfont spec, it both says:

"MIDI CC0 Bank Select - When received, the following program change 
should select the MIDI program
in this bank value instead of the default bank of 0

MIDI CC32 Bank Select LSB - When received, may behave in conjunction 
with CC0 Bank Select to provide a total of 16384 possible MIDI banks of 
programs."

and also says:

"The special case of a General MIDI percussion bank is handled 
conventionally by a wBank value of 128. If the value in either [wBank or 
wPreset] field is not a valid MIDI value of zero through 127, or 128 for 
wBank, the preset cannot be played but should be maintained."

Kind of confusing in itself, IMO.

// David