Re: [fluid-dev] How to recreate music originally composed using Logic X and Native Instruments Komplete patches?

[Ien Cheng]

Thanks Garth, that's all very useful information and helpful.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Garth Hjelte <address@hidden> wrote:

At 11:42 PM 12/8/2015, you wrote:

>What I'm trying to do is to interactively synthesize some musician-composed tracks in my program using FluidSynth.
>These tracks have been provided to me as MIDI files with the names of Native Instruments Komplete and Logic X instruments.
>As far as I can tell, both Komplete and Logic X use their own sample/patch format, not Soundfont 2.
>Given this, what's my best option for recreating the tracks using FluidSynth?
>Is it is somehow convert Komplete and Logic X patches to Soundfont 2 format? If so, how do I do this?Â
>Or should I just try to find Soundfont 2 patches that are as similar as possible to the original instruments used? If so, are there any Soundfont libraries that map to Komplete and/or Logic X libraries?

>This is not quite fluidsynth related issue but MIDI sequencing issue. There is no way to "convert" MIDI files optimized for one patch. Depends on the characteristics of the optimized patch being used, the differences vary.

Since FluidSynth uses only SoundFonts, it IS a topic very much dealing with FluidSynth. The poster wasn't asking to convert the MIDI files to SoundFonts, he wanted to know if he should convert the Instruments so-named (I assume he has them or has access to them) to SoundFonts or if he should use replacement instruments.

To answer the question: Komplete actually is a suite of different playback engines, and in context so is Logic X. There's really no such thing as "Komplete patches" or "Logic X patches". The named patches could be referring to any one of those instruments, but since you asked about SoundFont, I'll assume the referred Komplete ones are Kontakt instruments and the referred Logic X ones are EXS instruments (both being members of those suites). (But they may not be.)

With my product Translator www.chickensys.com, you can convert the EXS files to SoundFont, and you can with Kontakt to SoundFont ONLY if it's an older version of Komplete. If your Komplete contains Kontakt 5, you can't, because Native Instruments chose to lock up (encrypt) the factory libraries so it could only be used in Kontakt.

However, Translator DOES have a autosampler, so you could use that to get the instruments either in Komplete or Logic X - and that goes for ANY of the instruments aside from Kontakt or EXS - it's not a perfect solution but it's really close. If you MIDI's have lots of controller information you'll have to reprogram that in the new autosampled instruments.

Translator does do an admirable and accurate job converting these things to SoundFont. SoundFont in some ways is more capable than EXS, but Kontakt has more chance of exceeding SoundFonts capability. Still SoundFont is an excellent container for the basic parameters (tuning, loops, envelopes, etc.) and it may work very well for you.

But Instrument-replacement may be good to; and it's a probably simpler and easier route to go. Use good SoundFonts though - the GM stuff and small chincy things are just toys. There are high-quality SoundFonts out there. And even in this case, if you find quality instruments in another format, Translator can usually convert them to SoundFont for use in FluidSynth.

Garth Hjelte
Sampler User

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