Good.
I have littel experience in these matters,
but I do sometimes get tempted and go out and buy some instrument collection
or other.
As have happened most of the times, I realize I have a hard time actually
using such instruments in the setting that I actually do some work (csound)
and the CDs get stuffed away on a shelf.
I seem to recall I tried converting from giga format to sf2, using
chickensys translator, but that something went wrong in the conversion
(translator could not convert, or the file did not actually get converted,
or the converted file coud not be used, don't remember). My point of saying
this is that it might be good to just check, do a converstion from one of
the popular file formats to sfz and then play the sfz file in an application
that (already) supports the format, before coding the sampler that is. It
might just be that the format conversion tools advertise with support for
such and such file format (e.g. sfz) but that it's not actually able to do
much good with said files in practice.

But, since you mention that sfz is sort of an uncompressed sf2... What
features are lacking in sf2 ? Forgive my ignorance if sf2 is not open.

best
Oeyvind


2007/12/10, Steven Yi <stevenyi@gmail.com>:
>
> Hi Oeyvind,
>
> Thanks for the reply!  I'm still studying up on the format and
> wondering how to go about this all.  I'm most interested in working
> out a system that can tap into existing file formats.  Most of the
> sampler formats have similar basic features so it's a matter of
> picking one that's going to do.
>
> Further research in sfz looks like it is pretty much an unpacked sf2
> format. I'm thinking this will be fine and may also look at some kind
> of sf2 conversion tool.
>
> This is all in a sort of research phase at the moment.  It will
> probably start to come together when I actually start doing some
> coding. =)
>
> Thanks!
> steven
>
>
> On Dec 8, 2007 1:53 PM, Oeyvind Brandtsegg <obrandts@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think it would be a very good idea to write a csound sampler based on
> a
> > file format that is compatible (via conversion) with the commercial
> sample
> > collection file formats (gigasampler etc). I'm not familiar with the
> details
> > of such file formats, and can't say much about the choice of sfz.
> > Oeyvind
> >
> > 2007/12/7, Steven Yi <stevenyi@gmail.com>:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I've had in mind for a while now to build a high-quality Csound-based
> > > sampler.  I was thinking originally that the sampler would be best to
> > > implement the same features as some other formats to allow conversion
> > > to from one format to the one the csound-based one could use.  The
> > > reason for building a sampler in csound and not just communicating to
> > > one via MIDI or through something like VST is that I want a format
> > > that is cross-platform, completely open, and one which can be flexible
> > > to use within the csound world (i.e. can take in frequency instead of
> > > MIDI key nums so that it is easier to do glissandi as well as
> > > microtonal work).
> > >
> > > The sampler code I had planned to do all in Csound itself and not as a
> > > separate binary opcode plugin.  This allows flexibility.
> > >
> > > The sample spec that csound would need to read would have to be a
> > > something one of the gen routines could read in; this should be fine
> > > as the spec that csound will read is expected  to be generated by a
> > > program.
> > >
> > > Now, until today I wasn't sure on what kind of features to implement
> > > nor what samplers to model after, but I came across a mention to the
> > > sfz file format on one of the microtonal mailing lists:
> > >
> > > http://www.cakewalk.com/DevXchange/sfz.asp
> > >
> > > The program extreme sample convertor ( http://www.extranslator.com/)
> > > can translate to sfz.
> > >
> > > This format is open but I don't know that much of the history of this
> > > format and more importantly if it seems like it will stick around.
> > > One thing that seems a little strange is not finding much commercial
> > > support for this format which I assume is because it is extremely
> > > open.
> > >
> > > Anyone have thoughts on this format?  Perhaps it'll be worth using as
> > > the model and ultimately other formats could be added to convert from.
> > >
> > > steven
> > >
> > >
> > > Send bugs reports to this list.
> > > To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body
> "unsubscribe
> > csound"
> > >
> >
> >
>
>
> Send bugs reports to this list.
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>