ray890 wrote:Cos wrote:My computer is running on Windows 10 now.. When will we have native Windows 10 support? What about native INS (instrument files) support?
I still dream about a Synthfont pocket player.
None of the current MIDI players I have fully satisfy me. MIDI Eddie would be the closest, but it's a bit buggy, although it sends a MIDI SysEx reset message (GM2 included) and that's great. VanBasco might be better in some instances, super stable, and also sends a GM (not GM2 but it doesn't matter) reset message, although I am not so happy with it either.
My favourite current MIDI player is TMIDI: Tom's MIDI Player, although it does have an issue with MIDI resets. If a song is GS -reset message built in the song-, starting a new song on hardware means the song will sound in GS mode instead of native GM2 mode because it doesn't send MIDI SysEX messages in between songs.
In the meantime, I recommend that you contact the developer for Tom's MIDI Player; he may not be actively developing his player, but I found he's pretty active in responding to my emails and fixing the bugs I've reported to him. Alternatively, you may want to also test out the MIDI Player component of TiMidity++ (Win32GUI); but unfortunately it has bugs of its own and it's an abandoned project.
I may test SynthFont with Windows 10 and report Win10 specific bugs when I have a chance, even though I don't plan on using Windows 10 as my main OS any time soon.
Thanks for the suggestion. Alas, I am not in touch with him and I have very limited time as of late. If you ever copy my message to him in an email concerning the SysEx messages resetting the hardware to GS -or whatever- but not returning the hardware to its "default state" (General MIDI 2 in my case) it would be perfect.
In that sense, having the option to send a SysEx reset message (GS, GM2, GM, etc) when switching sons might do the trick, or filtering out SysEx messages --that's not without its issues if you don't send a SysEx message after a song starts though, because some songs are XG native and they distort the sound with GM2 modules for some reasons, with devilish superb hight pitched odd sounds and strange drums, etc etc.
I had another player that I used a lot before, Synthesia, but it's now when I discovered it's working perfectly with patches and bank changes no matter what. It works as good as Synthfont, save for some songs that if you don't send a GM2 reset message some sound might be off, but then you have Synthfont for that.
Synthesia (can you see how similar it sounds compared to Synthfont)
works perfectly as long as you use the option to filter out SysEx messages. Its only problem is that it doesn't send SysEx messages on whatever mode when a song starts and if you are unlucky to play a XG song, every single song afterwards is going to sound bad and full of high pitched sounds and odd sound overall to the point of becoming unbearable because a hardware reset message wasn't sent after the first XG song sounded.
Plus Synthesia isn't a pure MIDI player, like say.. VanBasco.
Back into Tom's MIDI..another issue I have with Tom's MIDI is that it freezes when I set the MIDI In to the Roland SD-50, and no other player does that. But I can live with that, actually, since I use other programs to edit music, Tom's MIDI is meant for playing..
I finally installed Synthfont 2 in Windows 10, it's working flawlessly.
Only problem I have is non OS related, just that I can't use as a default MIDI player, 'cos if I open a MIDI file on an internet site, Synthfont doesn't continue with the previous session and starts a new one.
That has two problems, one is that the previous session continues open -it'd be an ok feature if optional though- and it takes memory, I guess.
The second problem is that the Setup and Options aren't saved between sessions because of a bug. So Synthfont restarts with the default settings, and it's a nightmare to change them again -In and Out devices, GM2 reset Yes, check "use selected output instead of ANY Soundfont or VST instrument when no arrangement exists", etc etc, so it's a nightmare.
Additionally, it doesn't feel like a Synthfont mini player, but I could live with that meanwhile.