LOOPING POINTS

The Creative Vienna soundfont editor seems to adds a step to a sample correctly looped by the Zero-X Seamless Looper, after the Loop End Marker, as suggested by Paul Stratman in a jOrgan Forum thread devoted to this matter. It does this even with files that have been truncated (i.e. with no content after the End Marker). I have no idea how it does this, but perhaps it is not all that difficult. On the other hand, the Viena soundfont editor does NOT add such a step, and so the resulting looped sample which is being imported into a new soundfont using Viena, is one step shorter than one being processed when using Vienna. For notes of fairly low pitch, it seems to make little difference to the sound, but you can hear a slight click (or "tick") with higher pitch notes on looped samples imported into Viena, once you listen to them in your new soundfont.

There is a very simple work-around to this problem. After you have imported it into Viena, use the adjustment arrows at the right of the loop marker settings to decrease the start marker figure by "one". Then "update" the sample by clicking on the prompt higher up on the screen.

When I was working at one occasion on a soundfont with one sample per every four consecutive notes, in one instance I noticed that one of the four notes was producing a very soft tick, even after I had increased the sample size by one step. I was using sfz to do this auditioning, in the "draft" quality mode, and once I increased the quality to "08", the slight tick disappeared.

However, I need to add that after using the EARLWOOD ORGAN No.1 for some time, I noticed a very soft tick on some high pitch notes which was not due to looping discrepancies. It did not repeat, but occurred once, shortly after the start of the note. Investigation showed that a "rogue" step was responsible. It was just audible when using sfz, but I could not detect it when using Fluidsynth. I noticed that it occurred only on notes where the root key was the same as the note being sounded. Also, it did not occur in a consistent fashion, as it seemed to be absent from some notes fulfilling the root key condition. In the event, I solved the problem quite simply for the notes where I could hear it, by changing the position of the Instrument zones (splits) slightly, in order to avoid the root key condition.

With the work-around mentioned above, Viena becomes a very attractive program for making soundfonts. It may (or may not) be without some of the bells and whistles of some other programs, but as opposed to them, at least it is free. It is quite convenient to use, and of course you don't have to have a Creative soundcard installed in your computer, which is for some people, the big problem with Vienna. As I finish this article, let me say that I did investigate Viena's looping function, and I found it to be quite easy to use after some practice, assuming you have a fairly well-behaved sample to work with. If you have made your sample using Klangsynth or AdsynDX, then this ought to be the case, unless you have in some way been quite reckless is setting the Klangsynth parameters etc. For recorded samples, I wish you all the luck (and patience) in the world, and strongly advise you to use the excellent Zero-X Seamless Looper (if you have access to it, which regrettably has become very difficult), or even the more expensive but very comprehensive Awave Studio. Both these programs will allow you to improve your loop using cross-fading, which may be necessary with some challenging samples.

(Added February 2010)

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