Some tracks in imported midis are erroneously stated to have no notes

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Nooga
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2022 11:11 pm

Some tracks in imported midis are erroneously stated to have no notes

Post by Nooga »

Hi there! Bit of a small annoyance/possible bug, thought I'd document it here in hopes of a fix.

So in some of the midi files I've imported into SynthFont2x64 (probably happens in 32bit version as well), some of the tracks are muted because they "have no notes" according to the program. However, that's not actually the case - when I open them in MidiEditor, Musescore etc. there are clearly notes in the tracks in question. I don't want to use Musescore for my mixing because it lacks a lot of features SynthFont has (e.g. support for program changes, pitch bend, proper volume control etc. Also the UI isn't very good haha), and MidiEditor can't export as anything other than midi, so it leaves me in a bit of a pickle.

I've attached one of the midis in question, which fails to import a good chunk of the instruments properly. If the developers of the program could have a look that'd be awesome.
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Holehills (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Gates to Infinity).zip
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Admin
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Re: Some tracks in imported midis are erroneously stated to have no notes

Post by Admin »

The file you sent me is problematic in the sense that there are 27 tracks for the 16 midi channels. Some tracks share the same midi channel and the result is most certainly not what the designer thought it would be. For example, take track #2, "Piccolo", for midi channel 1. It assigns midi program 74 "Flute" at time 0. Then we have track 27, "Pan Flute", which also references midi channel 1. It assigns midi program 77 "Blown Bottle", also at time 0. Which one will actually be in effect? Not both, as all notes in channel 1 need to be played using the same midi program. In SynthFont2 the later track will determine the choice. Because of this simple fact, all events in track 27 are moved into track 2. The original track 2 contained 112 notes and track 27 contained 148 notes. The combined track contains thus 112+148=260 notes. This behavior of combining tracks is not present in SynthFont1, so if you want to verify that what I say is true, then please get SynthFont1 and check it out. This behavior of combining tracks was introduced in version 2.0.2.7 in January 2016, probably due to user recommendations.

This explains why some tracks are left empty. No notes are lost.
Nooga
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2022 11:11 pm

Re: Some tracks in imported midis are erroneously stated to have no notes

Post by Nooga »

Thanks for your reply! Good to know that no notes are actually lost and that it's just some oddities from weird composition. Bet that'd be the case with all of the ones that were giving me issues then. At some stage I'll test the problematic files on SynthFont1 and see if anything actually sounds different, but your insight has been very helpful. Thanks again :)
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