Working around Live 7's SoundFont problems

Recently I brought this very excellent bundle of Emax SoundFonts from the Digital Sound Factory. This is a great little collection of classic sounds from the original Emax sample library and when I say little I mean HUGE (800+)!! More on that library later.

If you've worked with SoundFonts before in Live 7 then I've probably struck fear into your heart already. Unfortunately there are some compatibility issues with Ableton Sampler. The good news is that, with the help of the VSTSynthFont plug in, we have a work-around.

This video shows what I'm talking about. I've set up VSTSynthFont and Sampler in two pairs. Each pair has the same instruments from the same SoundFont file. I chose one of the files from the Emax Bundle and the General MIDI file from SynthFont web site. The MIDI clips are also identical. Here's what happens:



Urk! The sample loop problems are probably the most obvious. Sampler's minimum loop length seems to be much bigger that the average loop in some of the smaller SoundFonts that you can download. Also the amplitude envelope is missing as well as a few other important settings like vibrato. For a small number of instruments it's not a big deal. For more than 800 then we've got a problem.

Well why don't we all just switch over to VSTSynthFont I hear you ask? Well unfortunately there are a few compatibility issues there too. Especially with Windows Vista. Dragging MIDI clips around can be quite disastrous:



But we can work around that too by removing the plug in BEFORE we rearrange our Live Set:



So with VSTSynthFont I can get going on those great classic sounds. It's not 100% bullet proof but it works if you treat it right AND the plug in can route audio to individual outputs! When you're trying to take advantage of Live's real power then this is a must have.