.sfz (for drums dmc and 4bit style) in chipsounds tutorial

[tommorow]

hello,

I've been playing with chipsounds every moment since I got it at 10 a.m. yesterday. I've never messed with .sfz .xml or attempted to write a tutorial before so If this is difficult to understand please bare with me.

Also I feel this needs a don't try this at home warning or I can't be held responsible for losses or damages or other legaleze. This was a DIY project and I'm just some normal guy on the forum.

the manual has a bit of info about hacking the .sfz files for making instruments. I thought I'd mess around with attempting to convert the samples from a korg minipops (the drums from jarre's oxygene) for 4 bit and dmc...like the joe and juelz kits.

first I made 32k raw (unsigned) 8 bit pcms. I used quicktime to export at 32k mono .wav files and then used audacity to save them as headerless raw files. I put them in a folder named "minipops_8bit" and put those in the drums folder (chipsounds/data/drums).

I made a copy of the "Joe Kit.sfz" file and replaced the sample names with those of my own saved it as "Minipops Kit.sfz" I added this to the chipsounds/programs/drums folder.

Next I added the sfz files to the chipsounds.bank.xml (after saving a backup copy of this file since it's kind of important) so in my text editor I copied the joe kit (both the 4 bit and dmz instances)

which look like this:

<AriaProgram id="400" name="04. Drums/Joe Kit DMC" category="console8" >
<AriaElement id="0" path="Programs/04. Drums/Joe Kit.sfz" >
<Define name="$GENERATOR" value="*com.Plogue.DAC.6Bit.Linear.DPCM"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_REF" value="1789772.73"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_DIV" value="54"/> <!-- "F" DMC clock ( 33143.94 Hz NTSC / 30789.02 Hz PAL) -->
</AriaElement>
</AriaProgram>

<AriaProgram id="401" name="04. Drums/Joe Kit 4Bit" category="console8" >
<AriaElement id="0" path="Programs/04. Drums/Joe Kit.sfz" >
<Define name="$GENERATOR" value="*com.Plogue.DAC.4Bit.Linear"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_REF" value="1022730"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_DIV" value="32"/> <!-- near 32Khz (sampled) -->
</AriaElement>
</AriaProgram>



and pasted the new instances of them just after the funky drummer digis. changing the id= to the next available spot. in this case 406 and 407 and change the names and paths to match my samples.

so I now had this:

<AriaProgram id="406" name="04. Drums/Minipops Kit DMC" category="console8" >
<AriaElement id="0" path="Programs/04. Drums/Minipops Kit.sfz" >
<Define name="$GENERATOR" value="*com.Plogue.DAC.6Bit.Linear.DPCM"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_REF" value="1789772.73"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_DIV" value="54"/> <!-- "F" DMC clock ( 33143.94 Hz NTSC / 30789.02 Hz PAL) -->
</AriaElement>
</AriaProgram>

<AriaProgram id="407" name="04. Drums/Minipops Kit 4Bit" category="console8" >
<AriaElement id="0" path="Programs/04. Drums/Minipops Kit.sfz" >
<Define name="$GENERATOR" value="*com.Plogue.DAC.4Bit.Linear"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_REF" value="1022730"/>
<Define name="$CLOCK_DIV" value="32"/> <!-- near 32Khz (sampled) -->
</AriaElement>
</AriaProgram>

and saved it.

when I opened up chipsounds I had Korg minipops in the pulldown under drums. I tested them briefly and then wrote this up.

I've got to hand it to the developers for properly labeling everything and making the specific sections of code easy to find for someone pretty new to this kind of thing.

It's an obsession, I'm planning some 808 samples next

this has been updated/edited twice to be a bit more thorough.

and in case you were wondering here's what they sound like:
http://www.foreveraway.com/fauxjarre.mp3

[davidv]

Hi

Thats a great tutorial on how to add new samples "as they were played" by DMC or a 4bit dac indeed.

I would have loved to include more in the main program, but with samples of course comes legal issues

Im quite suprised that someone managed to hack this correctly so early.

Next step is to add velocity layers and stuff to the SFZ file.s hehe
Or you own key switches and whatnot, once you get a hold of it, SFZ is hugely powerful

Congrats!

[tommorow]

It went away for a second when I thought I might have overstepped my bounds by writing it up myself.

It started as a simple question and just kind of snowballed.

totally in agreement about it being powerful.

also I'd love to share my work but I didn't record these samples, however if you want to give this a try I created a kit in the chipsounds preset section of the forum. you could just start with the raw wave files and follow along with this tutorial

(of course you'd have to change the names to electro kit.sfz and electro_8bit instead of minipops but I'm guessing if you're attempting the hack you'd probably figure that out.)

[tommorow]

So last night I spent till pretty late going through chipsounds development blog (particularly the vgmx one) and the official .sfz links posted here, fueled by your next steps comments, curiosity, and quad espressos and I'm having a blast (I know I'm a huge dork). So much to learn.

thanks for making so much info public. I love spending weekends doing this stuff (it's what makes bidule and max/msp so fun...stuff is deep). If there're any other links I should check out let me know.

[davidv]

thanks for making so much info public. I love spending weekends doing this stuff (it's what makes bidule and max/msp so fun...stuff is deep). If there're any other links I should check out let me know.

Theres a lot of very creative people out there who love to customized and tweak things at the low level, but dont want to get as low as the actual code.

I would say that plogue is mid-way between open source and a fully closed spec company.

[tommorow]

a little update to say that

I'm attempting to make a drag and drop (mac osx) tool for spitting out .sfz files when you drop a folder of .raw or .dmc samples (I've almost got it working). (built in max/msp). you'll still have to add the .sfz to the chipsounds.bank.xml but it will really simplify the process. more later.

tmro