I've downloaded them all... every single SoundFont-compatible VSTi I could find, and not a single one of them comes anywhere close to the accurate SoundFont reproduction of FluidSynth. Apparently, nobody else bothers to support SoundFont 2.1 modulators.
I want to give high praise to all of the programmers and contributors who have made FluidSynth such a terrific SoundFont synth. To my knowledge, FluidSynth and the Sound Blaster Audigy series stand alone as the most perfect implementations of the SoundFont spec. The Live! never had proper 2.1 modulator support and the X-Fi synth had so many bugs, it was unusable! I have been using SoundFonts for all of my custom sampling work for years (since 1994), and I have tried a lot of SoundFont-capable hardware and software. As the hardware solutions are going the way of the dodo, I think it is safe to proclaim FluidSynth as the current king of all SoundFont synths! Unfortunately, most people will never get to use it for one simple reason: FluidSynth does not exist in a popular plugin form such as VST. I understand the licensing issues that have prevented the creation of a VST instrument based on FluidSynth, but I am running into the hard, cold reality that there are no good SoundFont synths available in VST form to use in my music production workflow. Most of my music projects now must be accomplished in Windows, and trying to use FluidSynth (or Qsynth) as standalone applications alongside my music software is painful, to say the least. I am having to consider other sampling platforms because of this. Is there any chance that the developers of FluidSynth would be interested in modifying the license to allow a VST to be an option, perhaps something like what LinuxSampler does? I think it would do a lot for the long-term viability of the FluidSynth project. In its current state, it is simply too cumbersome to use in my workflow, and many others will feel the same way and never give it the time of day. This is a terrible shame for such a wonderful synthesizer. These are my thoughts at 2:23 in the morning... :) -~Chris _______________________________________________ fluid-dev mailing list fluid-dev@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-dev
