Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

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dahnielson
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Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by dahnielson » Sat Feb 02, 2008 12:52 am

Are there already some free utility I can use to convert from EXS24 and SF2 to GIG? Does anyone know if there are any libraries that can read them so I can create such a utility myself? (The libgig part is obiously already done, thank you guys!)
Last edited by dahnielson on Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Anders Dahnielson

Ardour2, Qtractor, Linuxsampler, M-AUDIO Delta 1010, Axiom 61, Korg D12, AKAI S2000, E-MU Proteus 2k, Roland R-5, Roland HP 1300e, Zoom RFX-1000, 4GB RAM x86_64 Intel Pentium Dual 1.80GHz Gentoo Linux

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Re: EXS24 and SF2 to GIG

Post by sbenno » Sat Feb 02, 2008 1:01 am

Hi,

swami might be of interest for SF2 to GIG conversion:

http://swami.resonance.org/trac

The author of Swami, AFAIK maintains fluidsynth too which is a SF2 player for linux (but not much development occurred lately AFAIK)
http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac

Ask Josh if he wants to join the fun. :)
Having a good SF2 to GIG importer would be handy for LS as it permits to play the samples through the efficient LS streaming engine
without needing to load large soundfont samples in RAM.

I think SF2 has quite some modulators (but not every SF2 makes use of it) so it could be that it might sometimes be possible to perfectly convert
SF2 to GIG. But anyway, given the large number of SF2 files around such a tool would certainly be of interest to many.
Especially for retro sound SF2 is interesting. :)

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Re: EXS24 and SF2 to GIG

Post by dahnielson » Sat Feb 02, 2008 1:41 am

One idea I have is to create an intermediate format, a clear text (or XML) file with the mapping and samples as wav, that a suite of tools can be built around. Like "iftogig", "sf2toif", "exstoif" (a bit like Netpbm but for samples).
Anders Dahnielson

Ardour2, Qtractor, Linuxsampler, M-AUDIO Delta 1010, Axiom 61, Korg D12, AKAI S2000, E-MU Proteus 2k, Roland R-5, Roland HP 1300e, Zoom RFX-1000, 4GB RAM x86_64 Intel Pentium Dual 1.80GHz Gentoo Linux

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Re: Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by dahnielson » Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:22 pm

(I've updated the topic title to reflect broadening of the scope.)

I'm currently in the process of collecting all information I can find about the formats and I need everyones help:

* I urge anyone who has any documentation or description of the EXS24 and HALion formats to please post it here or PM me. I will try to get some mappings translated with Chicken Systems Translator so I at least have some kind of known input to work from (of course I can't be certain that the Translator conversion is entirely transparent) or find someone with EXS24/HALion that can provide known input files.

* Not that I have looked into it yet, but I assume that the AKAI format should already be well documented.

* SFZ is open and very simple so that's a no brainer.

* SF2, which, as already stated, has some pretty good capabilities that are underused by most software players, and I can simply reuse code from other projects.

I haven't yet compared what features and parameters each format have, but my idea is to create an intermediate format or simply use SFZ.
Last edited by dahnielson on Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Anders Dahnielson

Ardour2, Qtractor, Linuxsampler, M-AUDIO Delta 1010, Axiom 61, Korg D12, AKAI S2000, E-MU Proteus 2k, Roland R-5, Roland HP 1300e, Zoom RFX-1000, 4GB RAM x86_64 Intel Pentium Dual 1.80GHz Gentoo Linux

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cuse
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Re: Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by cuse » Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:43 pm

dahnielson wrote: * Not that I have looked into it yet, but I assume that the AKAI format should already be well documented.
Well not so well documented for my taste, but you can find something on the web yes. I ported libakai to Linux years ago. It only covers the Akai format up to the S3000 series though.

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Re: Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by sbenno » Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:04 pm

As Christian said he some time ago wrote libakai it currently supports the Akai S1000, S01, S2000 and S3000 series.
Initially the goal was to load AKAI samples into LS but then the the GIG engine took lots of time to implement and
honestly said GIG is more interesting than the AKAI format as it permits to play high quality and realistic sounding samples.

http://stud.fh-heilbronn.de/~cschoene/projects/libakai/

I think the intermediate format sample format is a good idea as each developer can write his favorite
sample format to IF converter and then the IF to GIG will do the rest.
(although sometimes perfect conversion will be hard or impossible depending on the features of the source and target sample format).

But for an exercise you could try to write an app which uses libakai and libgig to make a direct AKAI to GIG converter.

For the AKAI there are many samples available so it is certainly interesting.

Thanks in advance for your contributions dahnielson !
cheers,
Benno

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Re: Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by dahnielson » Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:13 pm

cuse wrote:
dahnielson wrote: * Not that I have looked into it yet, but I assume that the AKAI format should already be well documented.
Well not so well documented for my taste, but you can find something on the web yes. I ported libakai to Linux years ago. It only covers the Akai format up to the S3000 series though.
Yes, that was what I had in mind. Documented in source, RTFS so to speak... :D
Anders Dahnielson

Ardour2, Qtractor, Linuxsampler, M-AUDIO Delta 1010, Axiom 61, Korg D12, AKAI S2000, E-MU Proteus 2k, Roland R-5, Roland HP 1300e, Zoom RFX-1000, 4GB RAM x86_64 Intel Pentium Dual 1.80GHz Gentoo Linux

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Re: Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by dahnielson » Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:18 pm

sbenno wrote: For the AKAI there are many samples available so it is certainly interesting.
Yes, that's my motivation as an AKAI owner. ;)

And there are indeed still a lot of libraries available, some of them expensive and overpriced in this DFD day and age, while other are real bargains. I believe S1000 is the format most AKAI libraries use.
Anders Dahnielson

Ardour2, Qtractor, Linuxsampler, M-AUDIO Delta 1010, Axiom 61, Korg D12, AKAI S2000, E-MU Proteus 2k, Roland R-5, Roland HP 1300e, Zoom RFX-1000, 4GB RAM x86_64 Intel Pentium Dual 1.80GHz Gentoo Linux

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Re: Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by dahnielson » Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:54 am

Since the conversion project is long term I just want to mention a short term solution: Download Chicken Systems Translator Free run it under Wine and convert SF2, EXS and others to Giga.

Limitations:

* You can only read the first listed Instrument Object on a Akai, Roland, Emu, Ensoniq, Kurzweil, or Mac disk or Virtual Drive.
* You can only write one Instrument Object to an empty Akai, Roland, Emu, Ensoniq, Kurzweil, or Mac disk or Virtual Drive.
* Bulk translations are disabled, and multi-selections are non-functional.
* You can only attempt a DOS->DOS translation once every 60 minutes.
* Formatting is disabled.
* SMDI sample transfer is disabled; however, you can view samples on a SMDI sampler.
* Property Sheets are read-only.

Everything else is fully functional! You can read and write DOS Counterpart files without limits. Basically everything we care about works without any limitations, so translating free libraries to Giga should be a breeze.

Some minor points for running Translator under Wine in GNU/Linux:

* Under View -> Format Options, select the Giga page in the notebook and change Type to Create Giga 3.0 for Giga3.
* Uncheck Perform "Upgrade to Version 2.0" routine. I believe it was responsible for crashing Translator on my first conversion attempt.
Anders Dahnielson

Ardour2, Qtractor, Linuxsampler, M-AUDIO Delta 1010, Axiom 61, Korg D12, AKAI S2000, E-MU Proteus 2k, Roland R-5, Roland HP 1300e, Zoom RFX-1000, 4GB RAM x86_64 Intel Pentium Dual 1.80GHz Gentoo Linux

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Re: Convert AKAI, EXS24, HALion, SFZ and SF2 to GIG

Post by ArthurX » Sat Jan 01, 2011 8:40 pm

Hi,

Thanks for the LS as it now is, I'm only looking for more good sounds.
How is work with a universal converter going, because I'm really seeing a lot of Kontakt samples. And would like to be able to use them.
I first will try the chick tools.

Greetings and a happy new year

Arthur

That grand piano sounds great, from the website. :)

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