I'm an organist and have a midi organ that uses fluidsynth to produce its sound. Audio fidelity is an important aspect to this project since several presets (hence very many instruments) can be sounding simultaneously. Distortion becomes noticeable very quickly.
I've been thinking of ways to deal with this, and one that comes to mind would be to split up the audio into several channels. By the way, I'm assuming all-mono sample sets for now. There are a number of ways to do this: I could opt for each preset to its own channel, or perhaps each octave on its own channel, etc., but I think what would be best is having each note class on its own channel.
If a user has 12 channels, this is simple, but I for one don't plan on having 12 channels of audio. If, for instance, I only have four channels, if I'm only playing four note-classes at a time, each channel should be occupied. If I add a fifth noteclass, one channel must do double-duty. Channels should be assigned pitch classes on the fly as the channels become available. Perhaps, imagine that C and E are on the same channel, then the other channels are sounding D, G, Bb, then the latter three are removed. It would be nice for fluidsynth to notice that only two sounds are sounding, and they're both on the same channel, so let's dynamically move one over to an unused channel.
Anyway, I hope you can see where I'm going with this, and perhaps something like this functionality already exists?
I am a software developer and have contributed to free software before, and am interested in doing so again, but I wanted to check with this community first for several reasons:
1.) Is this already implemented somewhere somehow?
2.) What kind of interest is there in this functionality? If none, is it conceivable that a patch with this functionality would be accepted?
3.) How should I get started? If this would never be accepted, I would still appreciate some guidance about where to begin looking at the code base so that I can patch my own fluidsynth.
Thank you for your time; Sincerely,
In Christ,
Aaron Laws