1 X Sound Font use Pro Audio 6.01 and Audigy Platinum Pro

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dave hammond

Post by dave hammond » Mon Mar 22, 2004 9:06 pm

I have been using Cakewalk for so long, that I have have Cakewalk Pro 6.01. I've never had a card that supported soundfonts. I just broke down and got a new computer (P4-3.0GHz hperthread replacing a 233MMX) and sound card (Audigy Platinum Pro replacing Turtle Beach Multisound). I chose this card mainly because I want to use sound fonts (which I have no prior experience with).

My old songs play fine, even those with too much wave data that scarecly played in the old rig.

I have tried to follow the instructions in the manual and insert soundfonts in some simple midi sequences. The sound fonts show up in the associated list, but the cheesy midi instruments still play rather than these soundfonts. I've been fumbling around with every pull down setting I can find in Cakewalk and the Sound Blaster Sound Font program. Everything I've tried either kills the playback or leaves it playing a cheesy instrument.

Any ideas, or have I given enough info?


HDB
Posts: 46
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2004 12:19 am

Post by HDB » Mon Mar 22, 2004 10:27 pm

Hmmmm. First of all go to "Options", "MIDI Devices" and make sure th SB card is chosen, and probably at the top in the MIDI output.
Then, make sure your ports for the tracks in the sequence you have loaded are set to the Soundfont Device. Go to "Options", "Soundfonts". Highliight the first blank bank, choose "Attach", and find the Soundfont you want to load in that bank. (If you want the Soundblaster to default to something like the 12MB Chaos Bank, load that in the Configure Bank in the Audio HQ>Soundfont from the pull down menu at the top of the screen. That should then be the General MIDI bank 0).
Now, say you wanna replace the bass. Load in a Bass SF to Bank 1. Go to the bass track in Cakewalk, go to the Bank column of that track, and double-click to open. Go to Bank, find the SF that you just loaded, and click on it. Be aware that some SF's have more than one patch in that bank. Sometimes the patches will be in the wrong spot to just open. For instance, a Bass patch that you previously used was at the standard patch # 33. But when you choose the bank, the patch in the patch window may just be a number. So go down to Patch, and scroll around until you find something. They are usually named. Click on it. The patch should now be loaded.
Now, you have the Chaos Bank playing everything BUT the bass. You can keep doing this until everything is replaced. It may get confusing.
You MAY even want to start out with a small default bank 0. That will use less memory if you are going to replace all the instruments anyway, as each bank you load will consume more. Also, in the Audio HQ>Soundfont window, you may want to go to "Options" and move your Static Caching to a sizeable number. Cakewalk may eventually tell you that you are out of memory if this is set too low when you try load a SF. When you are sure you have all your SF's loaded, you can always reduce it a bit.
See if all that helped.
Good luck,

HDB

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