BASSMIDI MIDI driver for Windows Vista/7 (x64 incl.)

[RichNagel]

BTW, another SC-55 SoundFont that y'all might like -> http://www.mediafire.com/?nundyjjtcnm ("Roland SC-55 v1.1.sf2", 9.9 megabytes).

[mudlord]

Yay,
Now everyone who has a girlfriend like Demi Moore can now have a desperate shag in a rubbish skip with a STD ridden prostitute! (metaphorically speaking)

xD
nice soundfont. I like the crappiness!

[RichNagel]

Yay,
Now everyone who has a girlfriend like Demi Moore can now have a desperate shag in a rubbish skip with a STD ridden prostitute! (metaphorically speaking)

xD
nice soundfont. I like the crappiness!

LMAO! I had to re-read that several times to get the gist of it though LOL!!

[Maxime]

I feel the same way. Now I'm using this Arachno soundfont I found in... someone's signature here, forget whose, but a lot of my songs were made to sound their best with MSGS.

*Discrete laugh* Hehehehehe...
Thanks for your interest! Feel free to comment about my SoundFont

About the GM.dls "imitations", I never found any of these to be really close of the real thing.
Although many newer software instruments sound close to their hardware counterparts (eg. Native Instruments' FX7), even MS' synth sounds crap compared to a real Sound Canvas...
So, an imitation of GM.dls would sound even worst to my ears!

[RichNagel]

Folks,

I threw this together the other day; a MIDI Implementation Chart and system exclusive messages list for the XMPlay MIDI Plugin, BASSMIDI, and the BASSMIDI Driver. It may not be 100% accurate, and doesn't list but the very basic XG system exclusive messages that they support... but it might prove useful to someone nonetheless

http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFon ... _Chart.htm

Other links of interest (that y'all may, or may not have seen):

http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFon ... XMPlay.htm
http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFon ... y.htm#midi
http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFon ... ration.htm

[ex-driver]

it would be nice if the driver supports wah wah or variations effects

[RichNagel]

it would be nice if the driver supports wah wah

I suppose that you're refering to the XG "Auto-Wah" variation effect, but you can manually add a wah-wah effect using MIDI controller 71 (Low-Pass Filter Resonance) in combination with MIDI controller 74 (Low-Pass Filter Cutoff)

That's essentially/sort of what the XG Auto-Wah variation effect does... modifies those controllers automatically in real-time.

[Blitz Lunar]

it's nice to support variation effects from the perspective of replaying midi data that uses them. plus, frankly, for a consistent LFO-style effect, why would you want to do it manually when you could have it automated?

if it's reasonable to implement variation effects somehow then that would be cool. my guess is that it'd be a lot of hassle.

[RichNagel]

if it's reasonable to implement variation effects somehow then that would be cool. my guess is that it'd be a lot of hassle.

In actuality, it's not the BASSMIDI driver itself (BASSMIDIDrv.dll); but rather the BASSMIDI Audio Libraries (BASSMIDI.dll) that would (or would not) provide support for the XG Variation effects.

The BASSMIDI Driver uses the BASSMIDI (and BASS) Audio Libraries for it's SoundFont synthesis engine, so any MIDI feature implementation is simply based on/limited to what the BASSMIDI Audio Libraries can do.

Ian Luck (of Un4seen Developments, the developer of the BASS and BASSMIDI Audio Libraries), has recently hinted ( http://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=125 ... 8#msg87518 ) that he might add XG Variation effects in a future version of the BASSMIDI Audio Libraries; which of course, would be EXTREMELY cool

[mudlord]

Sit-rep:

Currently testing a completely rewritten driver. Would of course publish a binary when ready.

[RichNagel]

Currently testing a completely rewritten driver. Would of course publish a binary when ready.

Looking forward to it, Mudlord

[mudlord]

uploaded, check first post.

[RichNagel]

Works perfecto Mudlord, thanks!

[RichNagel]

Hi Mudlord,

I'm noticing a wee bit of latency with the new version (2.0) of the BASSMIDI Driver. It's not much, but seems to be about twice of what the previous version (1.06) was.

The tests I had performed on version 1.06 resulted in (as close as I could tell) about 0.052 seconds of latency (which is almost inaudible); while the new version 2.0 results in (again, as close as I can tell) about 0.105 seconds of latency.

0.105 seconds isn't much latency at all (especially compared to other softsynths); but results in rather strange sounding things when using it in real-time (especially in conjunction with a hardware synth).

I'm no coder (by any sense of the term), but would this have anything to do with the "rewrote core driver to interface with DirectMusic" update mentioned in the changelog, or possibly the "fixed latency on driver initialization"?

Otherwise, no problems at all... uninstall of the old version, and install of the new version went without a glitch

[mudlord]

I'm no coder (by any sense of the term), but would this have anything to do with the "rewrote core driver to interface with DirectMusic" update mentioned in the changelog,

Yes, this is precisely the reason. Its due to the core rewrite.
DirectMusic (a API in DirectX) now controls the synth, not us like last time. So latency and sample buffering, and a whole lot of other crap is handled by the DirectMusic driver framework.
So really, we have no control over it, sorry. The basic guts is really now a WinMM wrapper around a DirectMusic based driver. And since its DirectMusic, you can blame Microsoft for said latency, since the system now handles such things anymore, not us.

Million dollar question: Do you notice latency with the Munt driver too? That also uses DirectMusic.