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What version of SFZ+ is this?


MagBass

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I'm having a problem I hope you can help me with.  I have some old pieces in which I used SFZ+.  I need to reassign those parts to another soundfont player since SFZ+ won't work in Win 10.  I tried to open one of the pieces on my current system but CbB says it can't find SFZ+.  This is what appears in the Synth Rack:

Missing%20SFZ+.jpg

Notice I have SFZ+ running, but above that it cannot find what seems to be a different version whose name is "rgc:audio sfz+".  My running copy is v 1.10 VST.  Does anyone have any idea what the other one is?  That's the one that will let me see what files and patches I used so I can move them to Juicy SF, which is 64-bit and works perfectly in CbB.  Thanks for any help you can offer.

(I wish René Ceballos would take his program back and update it.  It was so much easier having one instance of a program with multiple outputs...)

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The one in parens means CbB can't find it.

Honestly, the other one doesn't work either; the Cakewalk SFZ programs simply will not function in Win 10 (sounds terrible, causes crashes), but if I can find and open the one in parens, I can get the info I need from it.

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I was using 32bit SONAR when Live Synth Pro was popular and have no experience with early versions of 64bit SONAR.

I am not sure there was a 64bit version of LSP.

My guess is the first 2 entries in the synth rack refer to 32bit DX plug-ins.

If this is the case, they are not usable in 64bit hosts.

 

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2 hours ago, MagBass said:

Honestly, the other one doesn't work either; the Cakewalk SFZ programs simply will not function in Win 10 (sounds terrible, causes crashes),

Sorry to butt in, but my experience with the original (freeware?) SFZ  has been pretty good in Win 10, at least the build I run on my DAW. I have a lot of home-grown libraries used with it.

On the other hand, SFZ+, the commercial version with the more complicated UI, yeah I've not had much experience with it. I understood it to be a soundfont player, not the same beast as the original SFZ player.

Bottom line, I think it is important to distinguish which you are talking about. And, yeah, the OP has a problem with SFZ+.

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4 hours ago, JonD said:

Looks like you have Live Synth Pro installed.  If it's working correctly, can't you use that as your soundfont player? 

The piece I'm working on was ported from LiveSynth Pro many years back, but they went out of business long ago.  I then went to SFZ+ (which is a soundfont player, despite it's name), which worked absolutely fine until Win 10. I think I have a demo of the DXI version; maybe I can get that to install on a Win 7 PC to see if that tells me anything.

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4 hours ago, scook said:

My guess is the first 2 entries in the synth rack refer to 32bit DX plug-ins.

If this is the case, they are not usable in 64bit hosts.

As I said to JonD, I'll try to install the DXI version on my Win 7 PC; see if that helps.

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3 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Sorry to butt in, but my experience with the original (freeware?) SFZ  has been pretty good in Win 10, at least the build I run on my DAW. I have a lot of home-grown libraries used with it.

On the other hand, SFZ+, the commercial version with the more complicated UI, yeah I've not had much experience with it. I understood it to be a soundfont player, not the same beast as the original SFZ player.

Bottom line, I think it is important to distinguish which you are talking about. And, yeah, the OP has a problem with SFZ+.

SFZ crashes my CbB on Win 10, just like SFZ+ does.

Both SFZ and SFZ+ are soundfont-only players, to my knowledge.  No idea why Ceballos named it what he did.

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6 minutes ago, scook said:

If there is no 64bit DX plug-in (I am pretty sure it is 32bit only) then you will need to install a 32bit version of SONAR too.

32bit DX plug-ins do not load into 64bit hosts.

My Win 7 PC is 32-bit, so that should work.  I'm about to check.

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I was curious, because I remember having/using SFZ+; so I looked to see what I had (legitimate copies, not cracked versions). In a folder, I have sfz+.exe, sfz+.dll, and sfz+DXI.dll (all from 2003).  The standalone version works under Windows 10 Pro (tested with files from a recent CM issue, 4GMGSMT.SF2 (1996)).

 

 

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1 hour ago, User 905133 said:

I was curious, because I remember having/using SFZ+; so I looked to see what I had (legitimate copies, not cracked versions). In a folder, I have sfz+.exe, sfz+.dll, and sfz+DXI.dll (all from 2003).  The standalone version works under Windows 10 Pro (tested with files from a recent CM issue, 4GMGSMT.SF2 (1996)).

Yes, those are the files that are installed.  I don't recall, but the standalone may have worked for me, too, but I have no use for the standalone version.  I need what I'm now assuming is the DXI version to open an old project of mine to get information to move to another soundfont player.  I've installed 3 or 4 versions, both VST and DXI, on my Win 7 machine.  The VSTs all just say "sfz+" in the Synth Rack.  The DXIs (three versions, I think) crash SPlat (I don't have CbB on the Win 7 PC), even though the DXI shows in the Plugin Manager.  I don't know why or what else there is to try.  It may just be a lost cause.

 

Side note: I have a large number of PC DAWs, but there's none I've used longer or like better than Sonar/CbB.  I confess to being really pissed that Cakewalk 1. started that subscription mess, and 2. consequently went belly up,  It angers me when I read articles about the best DAWs and they no longer even mention Cakewalk, presumably because free can't be worth consideration, eh?  I have always preferred, and still do prefer, Cakewalk to Cubase, no matter what changes they make to it.  It's too bad Cakewalk couldn't have stayed solvent.  Rant over.

Edited by MagBass
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3 hours ago, MagBass said:

SFZ crashes my CbB on Win 10, just like SFZ+ does.

Both SFZ and SFZ+ are soundfont-only players, to my knowledge.  No idea why Ceballos named it what he did.

Argh, sorry I can't help you with SFZ crashing in your environment. That sucks. I've had, and continue to get, a lot of use out of it, under Windows 10 and CbB.

SFZ is not a soundfont player. It reads and implements the SFZ format. It is very easy to construct your own sample sets using a text editor and a collection of .WAV files.

 

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I have a number of ooooold projects that used LiveSynth as the soundfont player. I have now switched to BassMIDIVSTi as my SF player (64b, freeware).

To convert my old projects, I open up the old CW file in Notepad++, and the soundfonts I used are there in clear text, between all the binary data. I copy/transfer them across to BassMIDIVSTi, and the old track plays pretty close to what it used to! :D

NB: there is a small issue in the current version of BassMIDIVsti with sample rates/tuning and CW, but I have worked with the dev, and he  has sorted that out, so the next release will fix that. Maybe he has already released it, I am using a version he sent me to test.

If you wish to go from LiveSynth to another VSTi, then in my opinion, this one is more in line with it, and is not orphaned like SFZ+.

 

PS: it also plays SFZ files

Edited by John Kalabric
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2 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Argh, sorry I can't help you with SFZ crashing in your environment. That sucks. I've had, and continue to get, a lot of use out of it, under Windows 10 and CbB.

SFZ is not a soundfont player. It reads and implements the SFZ format. It is very easy to construct your own sample sets using a text editor and a collection of .WAV files.

Turns out SFZ doesn't crash CbB; it just stops working after opening a soundfont file.  The rest of CbB seems fine, but SFZ won't take any more input or do anything.

As for the format SFZ uses, my understanding has always been that it's a soundfont player that doesn't read SFZ files.  Check out this info page from back in the day:

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/sfz-by-cakewalk

I don't remember there being a manual for it, so that's the best I could find.  SFZ+ merely is a multi-timbral version of the same basic internal structure.  They use the same format.  A user comment does make mention of the SFZ format, but the page specs never refer to it.

Edited by MagBass
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1 hour ago, John Kalabric said:

I have a number of ooooold projects that used LiveSynth as the soundfont player. I have now switched to BassMIDIVSTi as my SF player (64b, freeware).

To convert my old projects, I open up the old CW file in Notepad++, and the soundfonts I used are there in clear text, between all the binary data. I copy/transfer them across to BassMIDIVSTi, and the old track plays pretty close to what it used to! :D

NB: there is a small issue in the current version of BassMIDIVsti with sample rates/tuning and CW, but I have worked with the dev, and he  has sorted that out, so the next release will fix that. Maybe he has already released it, I am using a version he sent me to test.

If you wish to go from LiveSynth to another VSTi, then in my opinion, this one is more in line with it, and is not orphaned like SFZ+.

 

PS: it also plays SFZ files

I'll check out BassMIDIVSTi .  Thanks.

I use your conversion practice also.  Only problem is, while you can find out exactly what soundfonts you had loaded, you don't know what patches they're set to and that's what I really want to know.

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50 minutes ago, MagBass said:

I use your conversion practice also.  Only problem is, while you can find out exactly what soundfonts you had loaded, you don't know what patches they're set to and that's what I really want to know.

I tended to use the bank and patch change on individual tracks (instead of relying on the state of the VSTi/DXi), so if you bring in the SF loads into the same banks, then these do map/work well.

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1 hour ago, John Kalabric said:

I tended to use the bank and patch change on individual tracks (instead of relying on the state of the VSTi/DXi), so if you bring in the SF loads into the same banks, then these do map/work well.

That doesn't always work. This Juicy SF plug that I just started using doesn't seem to respond to program change commands at all.

Anyway, after working on this all day, I was able to find what I was looking for. It was the DXI version of the program, but Cakewalk wouldn't use it while the VST version was available. I renamed the extension of the VST version, restarted CbB and loaded my project. The Synth Rack entry that had been in parens was now showing as available and I was able to get the information I needed. This might help others updating old projects in the future.

Thanks to everyone who responded and tried to help.

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