I built a bank of all the 128 General MIDI sounds, placed it on 15 channels, added drums on channel 10, and saved this as a multi. Plan B was to use Native Instruments Kontakt. Maybe that developer has stopped supporting it? bs-16 is available for Mac and PC but only in a 32-bit version and it hasn't been updated for a while.

He appears to be totally busy with his new version for iPhone/iPad, bs-16i, which is now available in the App Store. The developer does not reply to e-mail so I don't know if the sound level issue can be fixed. There is a demo version of the plugin that is fully functional but occasionally introduces some noise and I noticed that the sound level is very low although several SoundFonts sound quite good. It turned out to be quite difficult to find a SoundFont player for Mac, and the only one I found, bs-16, is made by a guy in Japan, unfortunately it is not free ($50). SoundFonts are relatively inexpensive or even free and many are built to comply with the General MIDI standard. It can easily be replaced by the DLS synth which sounds a little better, but far from good.Īfter googling General MIDI I learned that it is 'out of fashion' and that I should not have given away my old Yamaha TG-100 GM module :) I also realized that SoundFonts could provide a possible solution. The Mac version unfortunately uses Apple's horrible built in QT Synth for the basic set of GM sounds. This turned out to be more complicated than I expected. The first thing I wanted to do in Synfire was to create a set of general MIDI sounds that could be used as a starting point for learning the program. Not me, instead I buy and explore music software. Some people buy lots of clothes and shoes, go on holiday to foreign countries, go to restaurants, smoke, eat lots of candy, spend a fortune on their appearance, and spend countless hours playing computer games. So why did I buy Synfire? Well, mainly because of my insatiable musical curiosity, and learning the program will be an interesting challenge and hopefully quite entertaining. I can't read music and I don't know music theory and I really can't play any instruments.

I am a Synfire newbie and a somewhat unlikely user.

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