Quickly Test SFZ Samples

[GraysonPeddie]

Does anyone know what SFZ players allow me to quickly switch between different SFZ files using my MIDI controller? I simply like to load up all the SFZ files in multiple banks (128 patches per bank) and there are a lot of patches/instruments in Digital Sound Factory Planet Earth (E-MU Planet Earth) that I ordered last night since it has the ghatam sounds I like (listen to the instrument between 0:00 to 0:05 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKpLrmQsS_M). And there are a lot of instruments such as Wind Bells, Crystal, Domora, Pluck Bass, I mean--a lot.

Does such a program in Linux accomplish what I want to test how each instruments sound in different SFZ files?

If I have a real E-MU Planet Earth rackmount synth module, I can easily switch patches by using patch select buttons, but I don't. I am happy with loading samples into my computer, but only if I could quickly switch between SFZ files.

[lfz]

Would loading a few SFZs in qsampler and assigning each to a midi channel (which can be easily switched via controller) solve your problem? This is easy to setup, but may be tedious if you're dealing with many files.

[GraysonPeddie]

There are about 507 tiles total in the Planet Earth folder... :/

[noedig]

If you're willing to spend some time with Python, you could probably do this with a script.
I just got lscp (Linuxsampler Control Protocol) working with Python today. Using it, you could scan a directory for sfz files, load them in linuxsampler, and even automatically set up scenes in mididings and switch between them using Livedings.
LinuxSampler LSCP examples are at the bottom of this page: http://www.linuxsampler.org/documentation.html
Python LSCP available here: http://trac.chrisarndt.de/code/wiki/lscp
and docs here: https://chrisarndt.de/projects/lscp/doc ... iveKeyDict
And mididings available here: http://das.nasophon.de/mididings/

I haven't gotten as far as automating the mididings part just yet, but here's a quick Python script which adds a few sfz channels. Just replace the filenames with some of your samples. Linuxsampler needs to be started before the script is run. You might also have to add a MIDI device.

lscp-test.py.txt

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[kbongosmusic]

Thanks @noedlg,

Attached is a modified script, where it tries to help setup JACK audio, and an ALSA midi connection, and then allows numeric entry picking the index of a embedded sfz file list to swap into midi channel 1. I downloaded(cloned) the suggested python lscp, and just arranged the code as a sub-dir('lscp'). Running qsampler to compare with and test, qsampler seemed well behaved and would reflect the changes nicely.

My observations are that SFZ does not have the same tradition of SF2 where you have a collection of bank instruments. So for example, qsynth/fluidsynth can use a stock bank of 100+ instruments, and qsynth has some checkbox to help browse the sounds quickly with minimal mouse clicks. But with SFZ it's more centered on single individual sfz file selections(no bank collection concept).

I really like the SFZ simplicity/text control file and raw-wave files over the SF2 more binary approach.

Picking and auditioning sound samples is a large problem. Having to reach and mess around with the mouse is a pain. With the synth-keyboards I'm using, I don't even want to change channels because it's to tedious to go thru the m-audio control buttons to do this. My thought is programming these synth-keyboards is mostly stupid when it's connected and used by the computer which should be better equipped to do this sort of thing.

I've done something similar with some Yoshimi python scripting to try to easy the tedium of trying out different instrument/sounds. I'm still not happy with it, and consider taking it as far as setting up a database(like sqlite) that holds all the selections, and be able to annotate them as favorites, etc.

So for example, one target is to be able to select from a list of favorite synth sounds straight from the keyboard by adding custom controls.

UPDATE: I put an updated lscp_pick.py script I'm working on over at https://github.com/kbongos/tar-pit if anyone is interested. It now does a basic job of cycling thru sfz files to sample, offers to scan and make a list.. Thanks again @noedlg for getting me started on lscp python scripting.

[Arthurx]

Thanks @noedig @kbongo,
I will try your scripts
Especially the mididings

Greetings Arthur