Cheiz

Hi,

When I started to use APSLive drivers(years ago), i noticed that the soundfont pitching quality wasn't as good as it was with my old LiveWare drivers(black mixer) which came with my soundcard. When installed the newest creative drivers on XP, still the pitching wasn't as good as before. And also the kX drivers use this new(?) pitching method which gives weird sounds sometimes.

I've just tried to reinstall the old drivers to record the difference. The install only worked half becuase there are no XP drivers only win2000. But somehow i managed to open the Soundfont manager while the Microsoft XP drivers for the audio were installed. And indeed the quality was better. The SFMAN32.DLL version is 4.06.501 (50KB). Here you can hear the difference:

http://home.hccnet.nl/g.leegwater/so...est/KXmidi.wav
using KX drivers

http://home.hccnet.nl/g.leegwater/so...est/CTmidi.wav
using microsoft/creative old drivers

Also i've uploaded the midi file and the soundfont(load to bank 0) so people can reproduce this if they want:
http://home.hccnet.nl/g.leegwater/soundfonttest/

You can hear that especially on the second octave the notes get ugly with the new pitching. I made this soundfont and the waves myself and i know i can improve quality by not just looping one wavelength but looping much more.

Also i read something about "Improved soundfont support for looping samples" and "Two ways of looping" in the 3538g changelog... How exactly do I use these new features?

BTW i want to say these KX drivers are so cool i'm addicted to the DSP...

-Cheiz

wmjordan

Is it possible to have the old creative sfman.dll work on XP or 2003 with the KX Driver??

lucioblues

I'm using 3538h. When I play your Midi over your Sf file I've got the same results as you. But, when I play the same Midi file over another Sf, everything sound fine. I used Fluid's ocarina, piccolo and kalimba that can play all the notes.

marce

Here is a nice article on How a SBlive is compared with another sampler about the pitch aliasing trouble: (the article dont specify wich drivers, i suppose standard ones)

http://www.simonv.com/music/quality/

Eugene Gavrilov

try checking 'interpolate SRC' in the 'driver settings' dialog
let me know if this affects your pitching experience

E.

lucioblues

With this option the aliasing problem with the square.sf2 has gone!

Cheiz

Well, it definitely sounds a lot better! I'm not sure whether it's as good as the old Creative because that creative has such an ugly attack... The high notes still have some "extra frequency" but ok the highest test sample has a length of about 14? which is of course extreme.
I'm very glad about the "interpolate SRC" feature because the quality on shot samples improves a lot!

Bye,
Cheiz