Synthesia Video Creator DLS Sound Set

Trouble with Synthesia, your keyboard, or adapter? Think you found a bug?
When describing problems, always mention your OS and game version (shown at the bottom of the title screen).

If your keyboard has USB or MIDI ports, there is a tremendously high chance (>99%) it will work with Synthesia. See what you'll need on the keyboards page.
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pianomagician
Posts: 3

Post by pianomagician »

Hi everyone! I'm new to the forum. Love Synthesia. I'm using Windows 7 and Synthesia 10.4.4395 and I've installed VirtualMIDISSynth #1 as my Music output for improved sound. This works great when I use Synthesia. I have a .sf2 associated with the Synth.

The problem I have is that when I use the VideoCreator; how do I change DLS Sound Set? It defaults to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\gm.dls and this has very poor bass sound. Not like when I play same song with Synthesia. I want to generate a video to upload to YouTube with the same quality sound that I get when playing the song with Synthesia.

I don't know how to point to the .sf2 soundfont when I'm creating the video from the .midi file I tried to point to it but the resulting video had No Sound at all.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

pianomagician wrote:... how do I change DLS Sound Set?
Did you mean change the default so it's always different each time you start the app? (Otherwise: you can change the DLS file just by changing the path in that box.)

Really, a lot of the fault is on the MIDI synth that the Video Creator uses to render the audio. It's an older synth originally designed for feature phones (from the 2000s), so it includes a number of limitations. Notably: support for DLS files only (no SF2) and when things get loud the audio has a tendency to clip pretty badly.

The good news: starting in Synthesia 10.5 (beta here), we're including the same MIDI synth that VirtualMIDISynth uses under the hood (with support for SF2) files. So, you'll need one less step to get things set up. And -- while this isn't releasing when 10.5 goes out the door -- the next time we update the Video Creator, it will also use the same synth.
pianomagician
Posts: 3

Post by pianomagician »

Thanks for the information. Maybe I'll just use screen capture software to create the video since I have good stereo speakers. I look forward to the new Synthesia and the new Synthesia Video Creator.
Guigz75
Posts: 1

Post by Guigz75 »

Hi everyone,

I have the same problem : when I use SynthesiaVideoCreator with the file gm.dls, the sound is not very good (while it beautiful when I just read it in Synthesia, with the device "Voice Crystal").
I didn't find any .dls file wich product good sound online, only banks of .sf2 files, but if I use a .sf2 file on SynthesiaVideoCreator, it produces no sound. :(

Did anyone find a solution to that problem since last year ?
Does a new version of SynthesiaVideoCreator can read .sf2 files ?
Or does it exist a .dls file with a good sound ?
Or maybe a simple way to convert .sf2 files to .dls files ?
Or any other solution I didn't think of. :D
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

The Video Creator is still using the old (and what we eventually learned was also pretty buggy) Sonivox MIDI synth. That one can only use DLS files.

The new Synthesia 10.5 update includes a new synth based on the BASSMIDI library which seems to be much higher quality and can use SF2 files. (It doesn't hurt that the SoundFont we're including with Synthesia now has a 12 MB piano vs. the gm.dls which uses only 2 MB for all 128 of its instruments.)

The next time we update the Video Creator, I expect we'll be shifting things over to the new synth. The bad news is that there isn't an update scheduled until after Synthesia 10.6 and then Synthesia 11 go out the door. (Although, at that point, the schedule will be wiped pretty much clean and adding new features to the Video Creator will be right at the top of the list again.)
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