20221107

sample-net

back ~2000s and leading toware I had a tripod vst-software-page among others kind-of like this ;)

a music setup for me, currently depends on my mood and the practice stems from years of drawing and practicing/studying art.
oft-enough am sketching and abandoning.
when drawing I just throw crap out at this point and simply enjoy the practice sometimes just gestures and expressive influx or transitional concept sketching.
been playing around for a good handful of years and sort of grabbing specs for anything that hits my radar, albeit a bit lazily but the years aggregated and tools and the utility list comes to account. so the list here is of perhaps more than is useful to everyone considering its more for digging into understanding the source materials..

Its worth examining your standpoint as if I were to be standing here with you, would point out or be curious your interest in such a list as this.

student? Interested in learning about all the years and localities before we had some form of concensus through which may be provided universally, such tools under specification portending the resulting sound hitting your ears. For the most part this

I tend to “ride my own wave” wether covering another idea (or prior art) or not.

Most cases are just setting up a timing modality and pusing usually something kind of new or trying to figure another “mold” into template or theoretical fabric or prototype export.

AUDIO IO SAMPLE, PROJECT, PRESET SKELETON

scaffolding & finite copies (copies upon copies there upon even more thereof)
samples messes instruments drum-kit vst collections,
DAW, related utilities: “virtual studio tech”
click-bait thinkspace “R & D” in digital virtual analog music audio-synthesis over twenty-something years of losing multiple copies? IDK. Is just a list of things that can be fun to use and learn and is for the most part free stuff. so in the thinkspace, wrote a list of…
list of free tools and software not all vendors produce, yet I would like to see more
- VST v2.4 instruments and effects AND x86 binaries.
- proper MIDI implementation with regard to TEMPO_EVENT automation and ability to live-record “smooth” tempo-changes.
- proper VST MIDI effects, though there are many while in general midi capability is for the most part forgotton in its dexterity for example how common is it for you to need to look up SYSEX charts?
while many of the things on this list can be useful and fun, its a glimpse into what one may run across when examining potential audio madness o fun er something.
maybe a little overly verbose

AMAZING VENDORS

non-free: AKAI ARTURIA ARP CASIO KORG MOOG NATIVE-INSTRUMENTS NUMARK PROPELLERHEAD ROLAND/BOSS SYNAPSE-AUDIO U-HE STEINBERG SYNTH-EDIT WALDORF YAMAHA
yes MORE

UTILITY BAG

./.smp/.bin me has lots of utility bins.

a few tools until a better list

AIMP’s audio encoder comes into mind.
on the copy of copy of files thing, any library embedded audio player should be able to find duplicates.
sound font archiving packing unpacking
at least it would be good to have links and documentation or whatever
no thing defacto

Mrs. Watson is a command-line vst host.

Audacity @ www.audacityteam.org — audio wave-form editor

Feature-full and mostly useful for recording, cutting, and light effect processing. It uses the old X-Windows FLTK SDK kit for cross-platform development and has been the go to Open-Source Free Software for many years at this point.
Windows users are certainly going to want to figure out how to get the libAV (*.dll) plugged in so that you can import/export all the formats available to FFmpeg; See their release system and find the appropriate guide to get this set up as well as the version-specific binaries you may need.

FMJ-Soft Awave Studio (NON-FREE)
Swiss army blade for sampler/instrument formats housing more inst/sampler i/o than any other tool I’ve come across.

FFmpeg / libAV binary downloads

lib-av is a binary (*.dll or *.a or whatever extension on your operating system)
FFmpeg is the primary wrapper for it we all use as a swiss army knife for video content.
One may use Python, CSharp, C/CPP or other languages (console i/o) to automate

GoldWave https://www.goldwave.com/ (NON-FREE, listed here for posterity)
Does anybody remember GoldWave? LOL. I used to use this to paste (RB338) loops one after the next into in order to record a tape so that I could play it back and record a guitar line over it until a company from Germany named Sonic Foundry created a little set of tools called SoundForge and ACID. Not to mention Steinberg came out and had its Cubase and a Wave-Editor that was pretty frigging thrifty at the time.

Polyphone is a SoundFont and SFZ editor. Once upon a time, it was not so feature-full and buggy, albeit: promising. Perhaps the status I labeled it with a few years ago: “promising” has become more fruitful to date?

Can open SF2, SF3 and sfArk files.

see: Viena listed here in this doc.
For some time Viena has been better then polyphone; this may well have changed though I still like Viena.

SFPack and SFArk : Compress and Decompress SoundFont2 files
If in windows like me I would just use MSYS2 to compile this unless they’ve got it packaged haven’t looked. One could likely find a binary for this if they were looking for it and perhaps a shell extension. There is another Sound Font compression tool-kit out there I think its called SFPack. I could swear that I had my hands on a console-app but whatever—guess I’ll update this if so.

github.com/raboof/sfArkLib: original library for soundfont compression

github.com/raboof/sfarkxtc: sfArk extractor, console version

StoneVoices: vst plug-ins, knob-studio-v1.0, polygas VSTi granulator VSTi

WavePack @ www.wavpack.com

wavepack takes standard microsoft riff-wave form and losslessly cuts the file-size down and appends a *.wv or whatever extension. Its useful for packaging/distributing high quality audio.

MIXXX https://mixxx.org/ Open Source DJ Mixing software

MuseScore “THE WORLDS MOST POPULAR NOTATION SOFTWARE”

I think thats a decent quip description ^^^
Given the open-source community driven nature of this project, there are many instruments, plugins and further file formats, I’m sure, finding their way into the many things you can do with this suite.

SynthFont’s Viena (v1.192@20221105) — “the free SoundFont editor” for windows.

this utility can load *.DLS and *.SF2 files and can save *.SF2.
SoundFont Links
check out their what’s new page for screen-shots and idea of what this looks like.

Basically this is the best sound-font editor I’ve come across aside from the original Viena sound-font editor which only worked if you had some kind of Creative SoundBlaster PCI sound-card or something.

MIDI DRIVER (windows) <— VST2

[smfio]

MIDI is a powerful spec. Wrote a MIDI software parser in CSharp ([smfio]) or something and a few other tools but that aint the point. There are many implementations like the SoundFont2 engine in both hardware and software and MIDI is simply used as a communication timing protocol now among most music hardware manufactured these days. So if you have a computer and like learning crap about music and raising your understanding of the engineering it takes to effectively create MIDI compatible synthesis like a VST Instrument or something — it simply helps to zoom out and see the kinds of engineering comparatively useful.

There is a lot of compelling stuff filling the gaps these recent years in sort of a “scene” of its own paying homage to one of the oldest digital music scene histories indwelling GM spec.

VSTDRIVER — windows: releases
thread with screenshots

Windows MIDI driver based your VST Instrument.
So this guy is good for VST instruments designed to take MIDI files full force which means 16 channels of instruments including the channel 10 (default percussion) of which there should be multiple drum kits rock, jazz, orchestra, electric at least if General MIDI standardized like SoundFont GM banks which come in different sizes to suit different hardware or software capacity. There are also many CHIP implementations based on M.A.M.E. usually emulating some of the classic music systems from old games.

So on old games and systems before MP3 there was MIDI.

In other words its the kind of thing to geek out on listening to MIDI files and learning GM, GS, XG and all sorts of IC simplified variations. Since SoundFont2 is an open standard and now SFZ and SF3 are gaining stride there is no shortage of candidate VST for playing around with pure MIDI. YAYAMA S-YXG50 VST Instrument is my favorite candidate for this utility.

There are currently to my knowledge the following extensions on/to General MIDI standard(s) implementations:

So in order for a MIDI file to explain that its for GS or XG or GM, one could execute a System Exclusive Message also known as SYX or SysEx Message(s) telling the player/host-system

Apple QuickTime (player) uses Roland GS (aka: General Sound) standards on top of GM (General MIDI standard).
YAMAHA XG
Creative Soundblaster SoundFont (GM) implements its own compliant hardware
Microsoft DLS (Downloadable Sounds)
FM Chip Synthesizer — OPL & OPN — VST/LV2/Standalone
github.com/jpcima/ADLplug github.com/jpcima/ADLplug/releases
Then I guess you would need really perfect MIDI files or to make them which means you need good tools and you have charts of SYSEX messages all ready to reference ;/
BASS and FMOD audio api

SAMPLE HUNTING

SOME THEORY ON THE MATTER

There are many sources of samples in the respective (ideal driven) community for example each sampler hardware you can think of may well entertain samples in whatever format Akai, Kurziwell and so forth. Open source tools can make this trip an adventure however it would be useful to have utilities that can man-handle whatever sample formats your looking to find. For this reason, many of the sample archives one may find will be in RAW form of some kind like WAVE, AIFF, MP3, M4A or whatever may be considered acceptable or perhaps “lossless” in terms of aliasing/anti-aliasing. I tend to like raw un-processed stuff but everything is at least chopped and filtered a little, of course.

As perhaps mentioned above, one favorite format that I’ve looked for over the years has been SoundFont II and SFz because white-paper exists and leaves the format open for use. This generally allows a great standard such as this to port to others of equal or lesser quality of “standard”(s).

Sampler Formats

So when it comes to sampler formats, you go with the one that has the most (encapsulated, concensus) features. That being said, all we really need from any given

format-name	engine type	file-extension	implementations
gigasampler	GM/GS patch/bank	gig, giga	various
SoundFont v2.4	general midi patch/bank system	sf2 sfArk sfPack	various
SoundFont v3.0	general midi patch/bank system	sf3	various
SoundFont Z	general midi patch/bank system	sfz	various
Kontakt	Native Instruments KONTAKT VSTi	nki	software/sampler
Battery	Native Instruments Battery VSTi	??	software/sampler
Orion OSP	custom format bank like sf2	osp	software/sampler
Impulse Tracker	trekker software file-format	ITI	software/tracker
AKAI-P MPC	hardware patches	disk formats	software hardware
KURZIWELL	hardware patch	disk formats	hardware

So in theory there will always be new formats but if you think, is kind of easy to come up with un-adulterated kit emulations if used in proper hard/soft-ware

There are many other MUSIC THEORY related tools out there to check out and learn from.

me likie drum machines and kits (samples)

in regard to flavours or styles and given the quality and common use of effects these days, almost any sound (drum or other) can pretty much pitch and yaw into settings to friggin speak let alone sound like another drum or key. Nevertheless, we generally have the flavour handed down to us, at least maybe remembered in addition to midi-gm/gs-bank patches — not only do we have localities and subgenras worth of character but “African” “Dry” “Electronic” “Electro” &/o “Industrial” “Jazz” (brush, sweep & tap) “Latin” “Live” “Orchestral” & select percussion “Rock” “Sound Effect” “Standard” or Default “Ethnic” be it venue, studio or culture — well, venue not so much. “World Instruments” come to mind, a little bit in this category but tend to be stored in large GM kit extensions perhaps?

manufacturer	model	comment
AKAI	XR 10
ALESIS	HR 16	There is a handful of DR-N series percussion instruments.
BOSS	CR 8, CR 78, DR 55, DR 110, DR 550
CASIO	SK-1, PT-68	yep lots of CASIO kits
KORG	M1, TRITON	has many well recognized drum patches
LINN	MK2
OBERHEIM	DMX
ROLAND	TR 606, TR 808, TR 909, CR 78, HS R8	Kind of worth pointing out that Roland not only pioneered much in the realm of dsp-audio development (through use of presets, patches, sample recordings and so forth) but much of the current normative MIDI standards were parallel to Roland spec as well as many other vendor/manufacturer(s).
WALDORF	`.PRS`	I can’t really think of any hardware I just love Waldorf Attack or those few years I played around with it.
YAMAHA	SY22	has many many hardwares featuring kits as well as GM or XG standards through which there are several flavours of drum kits provided.

So all I can really assert here is that there are several flavours of drum kits.

WAVE SAMPLE WEBSITES

Don’t forget there are lots and lots of sound packs
- Lucas Arts Sound Effects Library
- There are quite a few vinyl sampler disks
- Hanna Barbara and other SFX packs to find out there
- google: “royalty free samples”
  ^ may be a fair start, but could be better
General Sampling Sites

SOUNDFONT 2 SOURCES

There are a lot of project spaces shared through music communities using GIT and other drives but GIT like github is a good thing for sharing projects.

DIGITAL AUDIO WORKSTATION

AKAI Pro MPC Beats
provides leading MPC standard series gone virtual, given freely. The DAW/Sampler provides AKAI effects and AiR effect series in addition to several free sample kits to get you started and amazing Instruments to beheld.
(user must provide email).

L.M.M.S. can perhaps be thought of as an open source collaborative collection of synths and tools to get going making beats to spite a budget. F.O.S.S. free and open source solution community of some fun tools.

Synapse Audio Software (aka: Sonic-Syndicate) Orion

Without a doubt my favorite DAW to tinker/prototype with because it keeps things fairly simple as its seeming golden rule. All the provided instruments are as simply powerful, albeit there are a few limitations you don’t see in larger established brands.

Image-Line Fruity Loops — powerfully simple
The DAW is without doubt one of the leading competitors in use. Historically it was made by a game developer and the quality of engineering has never really changed throughout its years of production. Over the years FL has held itself feature-fully on top of the music making scene from advanced to new-b.

ardour.org Ardour

“Record, Edit, and Mix on Linux, macOS and Windows”

A little over-developed in some areas perhaps under in others. Quality either way I look at it and provides a laundry list of utility that would take for ever to explain such as full source code.

The only problem I have here comes down to the VST implementation which is written to facilitate VST on Linux. Luckily it ports to windows, however its beyond my understanding at this point. I really can’t imagine VST on Linux but LMMS is another example of the very same VST hosting modality.

Ableton LIVE

“fast, fluid and flexible software for music creation and performance”

I’m thinking everyone knows what this is. I sure do. A VST host written in Qt-Framework(s). This is an amazing tool. I just don’t bank on it. I could list all my favorite things about it but if it runs VST and connects midi controllers and all that I’m good.

BandLab Cakewalk
well, BandLab produces a community through which are available such tools as Cakewalk Pro Audio suite of a very powerful audio production utility, one of the oldest and best lines to hit the audio production market back in the day. It Cakewalk Pro Audio was best known in its ~v9.0-release providing a rich set of MIDI features and MACRO PANELS through which one can control advanced MIDI effects, controllers, etc. Sadly, last time I attempted running CW, it ran my system red however it does ship with a collection of effects and samples worth checking out.
Not to be a jerk, but I prefer the old v9 to the over-developed COM interfacing here. Only, the new DAW does support VST.

Studio Rack — github/studiorack is certainly worth mention

TRACKER COMMUNITY (AKA sort-of: ‘demo-scene’)

and/or &| demo-scene includes game-ic/chip audio development and brings the challenge of discreet low quality sampling strategem to the “table”.
In theory the concept is to look at making some of the simplest hardware systems in order to create music [”intelligent”, one might say].
One may supplement their own low-level audio engine to facilitate such.

There is for example a particular f-mod is a good example of a music library one might think of sort of as a daw (maybe); lib**modplug** or open-modplug-tracker being other example cases of tiny ‘demo’ music-scene, tiny in the sense of byte-size if possible. luckily there is at least enough fandom of the scene to keep the software running one way or the other.

These days I would suggest a dabble every now again into or challenging some tool someone invented to make music simple; —at the idea of writing one (bass, drums, lead [game-music-engine], sampler/oscilator) in which case when you look under the hood of such as Impulse Trekker (II) you learn how the tuning system runs out of phase a little at harmonies further from key-root, for example to achieve small binary size and compatibility with much older hardware and audio standards in terms of math or ASM (assembly-language) might convince your ears that what your hearing is harmonic or music yet even. can be a humbling experience even when you figure out everything you can do with such a machine and makes for a good benchmark of ones base instinct or expertise.

won’t get started on anything video here, i don’t think

OPL YAMAHA FM emulator tunes
see: doomwiki.org/OPL_emulation to learn more about the chip and its emulation.
deflemask is a SEGA Genesis sounding audio tracker project that can make some interesting tunes.

FastTracker II
archive.org/demoscene_Fasttracker2 — wikipedia/FastTracker_2. Of course I’d reccomend ModPlug over FT2 but one may use FT2 instruments and standards and generate multiple formats of which FT2 is one of the best (but lossy tuning system).

Open Mod Plug Tracker
attempts to facilitate every tracker format possible and does a decent job of aggregating for certain.

FamiTracker
is a super-nintendo or Super Famicom audio system emulator that basically plays game music. It is indeed one of my favorite music trackers to muck around with.

VIRTUAL STUDIO INSTRUMENTS AND EFFECTS

Okay, so just a quick burst of stuff not in the “bigger” following list…

ADHD Leveling Tool, Arppe2600va [synthedit], Bitsonic Audio, daHornet, discoDSP, FireBird, Fuzzpilz, fxpansion, hnm, KarmaFX, KJaerhus, Luxonix, Magical 8-bit, Muon, Native-Instruments [Battery, FM7/8, Guitar Rig, Kontakt], Propellerhead Europa (synth), rcg-audio [Triangle I, Triangle II], Reaper plugins (aka: reaplugs), reFX claw, RS-MET, sitala, Smart Electronix, Sonitius Fx, Steinberg VST Classics, Stylenth, Synapse [Junglist, Scorpion, Plucked String, Zampler-RX, Dune], TOGU Audio Line, ToneBoosters, Valdemar Erlingsson (Sharp Sound Device), Valhalla, x-buz, Youlean

VENDORS WORTH TAKING A LOOK AT

not that all vendors arent worth thaking a look at

Full Bucket Music
FBM provides a extensive variety of interesting VA instruments

“The plug-ins on this site are freely available for both Windows/macOS and are built using the WDL-OL/IPlug and iPlug2 frameworks maintained by Oli Larkin and community”

Linux Sampler
May or not at this point be painful to set up on windows but can handle gigasampler, soundfont and several other formats, I believe.

Plogue
provides us Sforzando which is a SoundFont2 (converts to) SFz audio instrument and drum-kit sampler. SFZ is a text format around wave samples (and other lossless SFZ acceptable formats) and quite portable like SoundFont-v2.4. while the public domain provides limited support for the format, Sforzando is one of the finest implementations I’ve seen.
Of course there are other synthesizers and tools worth a glance.

TOGU Audio Line (aka: TAL)
provides many old Instruments and Effects for free to this day. The freely available instruments and effects are likely x86 format.

Free plugin list includes TAL-Filter, Reverb-4 Chorus-LX, NoiseMaker and Vocoder.

Obsolete plugins are supplied in x86 binary format and includes (unlike the above) synthesizers absolutely worth checking out.

VST INSTRUMENTS

OB-XD classic obberheim 80s Synth sound.
a beautiful work to date. I’m simply aware that there are two prior versions. The second (generally) version included support for skins and preset packages. Looking forward to playing with the new one.

TheWaveWarden: Odin open-source Odin 2 Synthesizer Plugin
github.com/TheWaveWarden/odin2

PG-8X 2 classic 80/90s Synth sound [iplug]. Roland JX emulation.

CM_Dominator (unpacked compressed binary) is yet another gem hiding out there in the wild.

Helm — “a free polyphonic synth with lots of modulation”.
github.com/mtytel/helm donated once and then compiled another version years. I could not stress enough how many instruments you have access to if you install a compiler.
Grab as many presets as possible if you can.

Karplus Synthesis (wavetable and/o “synthetic string” oscillation)

see: luciopaiva.com/karplus & github.com/luciopaiva/karplus

KORG ARP ODYSSEY (non-free) is worth mention here

KORG TRITON (non-free) also worth a look

Muon Tau (free edition) is available from the muon-software facebook page (when they get it back up). Its simply one of the first 303-like VST instruments introduced to the DSP audio PC world back in the day, and free through Computer Music magazine, — I believe, originally. Its got a saw, square, cutoff, reso and env.

SQ:8L is a VA worth a look however I believe its parameterization maybe a bit lacking.
www.buchty.net/ensoniq

Synth1 is simply a classic VST synthesizer featuring FM AM and well it just rocks. has arpeggiation too.

SynthFont http://www.synthfont.com/

Air Tube Synth is another gem. I simply use it with MPC beats. Me likie.
https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-plugin-instruments#tubesynth
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/tube-synth-by-air-music-technology

u-he Tyrell N6 is an absulut MUST HAVE. May as well collect as many presets as may find when you dig this guy up. Its a powerful synth designed/specced by geeks and prototyped by u-he. Berry nice.

VST DRUM MACHINE(S)

e-phonic Drumatic — Created with Synth-Edit.
x86 binaries of the original line of “Drumatic”, a wonderful little electronic drum synthesizer.
The work has been ported and revisioned into pure (non-SynthEdit) VST format but my broke little but aint got it.

See the archived plugins for the x86 SynthEdit plugins absolutely worth checking out. https://www.e-phonic.com/archived-plugins.html

Plogue : Sforzando plays SFZ instruments or drum kits and can import/convert SF2 files to SFZ on inport.

Sforzando can be very useful for those in need of a capabable sampler/player and Sforzando is indeed powerful.

Plenty of tools can be used to author SoundFont2 files and once you have a decent SF2 you can port it to SFZ however there have been additions to the SFz spec as the original SoundFont v2.4 white-paper hadn’t thought of those handful of years back.

Its also possible to program a UI interface or at the very least add knobs to bend pitches and envelops of things using MIDI CC (Controller Parameters) such as to change ADSR or AHDSR er whatnot, or perhaps control HP/LP filtering of a given layer of samples (sample-group).

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS KONTAKT, BATTERY

FRUITY LOOPS FPC

VST EFFECTS

goal: find and list effects and sources if possible

DSP effects can be generally broken into several categories

comprehension of Audio & MIDI standards

plugins made either freely or commercially at practice

SynthEdit Plugins (i know; don’t really use em any more)

Synapse Audio licenses a good handful of instruments Dune. One of my favorite synths from this guy was the TS-404 he made quite a handful of years back perhaps with DirectX/DirectSound tech

MAXIM DIGITAL AUDIO Audio FX & Instrument Plug-ins.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mda-vst/

Another GEM JX-16 released by Steinberg — x86 vst2.

Dexed – DX7 emulated VST Instrument

airwindows and on github

see: https://airwindowscheatsheet.aboni.dev/

VOXENGO ➡ free plugins

https://github.com/avaneev
There are quite a few classic VOXENGO plugins worth checking out.

Ohm Brothers merch and a few free plugins
https://www.musicradar.com/news/computer-music-100-bass-issue-249-is-out-now

Ohm Brothers were among the first to LERP or smooth (interpolate) VST knob-like parameters in their effects where it matters, like DELAYS for example.

Variety of Sound Audio Plugins
¡COOL!¡finally! x64 versions of their audio plugins!
epicPLATE, BootEQ mkIII, Density mkIII, TesslaPRO mkIII, FlavourMTC, ThrillseekerVBL, FerricTDS mkII, NastyVCS, NastyDLA mkII, preFIX, BaxterEQ

KJhaerhus: Classic Audio Effects: i686/x86 VST2; NO x64; Windows
Classic Series: Auto Filter, Classic Chorus, Compresser, Delay, EQ, Flange, Master-Limiter, Phase, Reverb

GVST Audio Plugin Effects
GDuckDelay being a current favorite.
The delay has a 2 second buffer maximum which is like eight little quarter segments and like 2 little four-note bars at 120 BPM.

saturator/compressor(s) [what-ever learn from them]

don’t tend to use FFT too much if I don’t have to. Usually just for bench-marking.

Native Instruments has an extensive free bundle of instruments stripped of many professional features. Much NI love here, in particular their Y/FM/DX (yamaha dx re-throw). Its been a joy watching NI grow over the years.
I have many favorites from the older VST they produced like

SAMPLER CONTENT DIRECTORY [a little bash script(ing)]

DAW and instrument specific directory struction
windows 10 machine however using bash console

not entirely having wrapped mind around publicly releasing sample kits

wavfiles=c:/.wav
mkdir ${wavfiles}
pushd ${wavfiles}
mkdir ‘.x’ /** export/post(s) **/
mkdir ‘.it’
mkdir ‘.rbm’
mkdir ‘.mpt’
mkdir ‘.prs’
mkdir ‘.mpc’
mkdir ‘.sf2’
mkdir -p ‘.wav/.2sample’
# you get the idea

vst_path=c:/.vst
vst_x86=${vst_path}/x86
vst_x64=${vst_path}/x64

function mk_vstpath {
  mkdir ”${vst_x86}/${1}”
  mkdir ”${vst_x64}/${1}”
}

mkdir ‘c:/.vst’

# create 
mk_vstpath mda
mk_vstpath tfw.io
# etc