Help with adding new SFZ Soundfont instruments, and official LinuxSampler library recovery

Software
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Hi everybody!

I have been trying to expand the orchestral palette of LinuxSampler, adding instruments to the appropriate categories (Brass, Strings, Woodwinds, etc.) of the pre-loaded SFZ library, which comes with the last stable Zynthian image.

My sources - after a bit of online research about the most well-regarded freeware orchestral soundfont collections - have been:

VSCO (Versilian Studios Community Edition) and Virtual Playing Orchestra,
both on this page:

https://vis.versilstudios.com/vsco-community.html

I have thus uploaded new (zipped) SFZ files to the LinuxSampler library directories, through the Webconf Soundfonts menu. Everything looked good up to this point, with new instruments appearing as a generous list, in the preset categories of a test LinuxSampler synth chain.

Except, the new instruments don’t load, and trying to do so freezes the Zynthian or leads to unpredictable UI behaviour, requiring hard reboot.

I may have possibly missed how to properly include instrument metadata and definitions, in the relevant places. I also wonder if the samples from the mentioned collections may already belong to the official Zynthian LinuxSampler library.

Any suggestions as how to proceed would be greatly welcome: I guess the issue might actually depend on lacking or misplaced instrument definitions.

Also, it would really help if someone (maybe @jofemodo ?) posted here the official Zynthian LinuxSampler Soundfont library, in order for me to reset in Webconf the instrumental subdirectories to their original state, without having to reinstall and reconfigure the OS.
Next time, I will prudently create new directories for experiments with added instruments…

Thanks in advance for any answer!

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I also checked these soundfonts and I sticked to the VPO3.

I had to modify them to fix paths, I attach my simple script fix_VPO_paths.sh (143 Bytes)
that fixes them.

And I use them without a problem.

Just remove the ones you have created, they are inside MySFZ.
Then add a new bank for each soundfont, in this case VPO3.
Finally upload the corrected soundfont and you’ll be done.

Hope it helps!

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Hi Pau!

Many thanks for your generous reply :slight_smile: I too was thinking that VPO3 looked like possibly the best of all available worlds, as far as free orchestral soundfonts go.

I then gather that I would have to run your script, in order to rearrange certain VPO3 instrument definitions in a proper way for ZynthianOS/Debian.

Sorry for my lack of IT fluency in this particular matter, but I am not sure to understand where I should type/paste your script lines.

I am using an official V4 kit, doing all of the external Webconfig stuff on a Win 10 PC, connected through LAN to the Zynthian. I surmise - but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong - that the script, arguably within some kind of terminal window, is meant to process and rename some file details. How do I specifically proceed to this end?

Furthermore: going from the detailed explanations in the VPO3 site, it would appear that, before zipping the instrumental categories for uploading to the Zynthian, I should include raw WAV samples and SFZ metadata definitions together, in the same directories, probably needing to copy the Lib directory of VOP3 multiple times, inside each instrument’s subfolder. At least, this seems to me the only way to mirror the directories structure required for VOP3 in a ZynthianOS parlance understandable to Webconfig.

As for spotting files recently added to the Linuxsampler Zynthian library, this proves to be not an easy task, since in Webconfig there is not time/date tracking for shown items, and I carelessly added new instruments to the existing folders, realising only later that I should have created new MYSfz directories!

I have tried to mount the ZynthianOS img file as a virtual drive in Windows, using DiskInternals, in order to browse and copy the LinuxSampler library content, but I seem not to be able to access it ,because Windows sees it as a corrupted file (downloaded twice for safety).

Cheers, and thanks!

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Sorry for my short answer, we usually take things for granted that are not so obvious.

VPO3 is distributed in three separate files as explained here.

You always have to download the wave files

And you must decide the way that you want to control the volume, using the MOD wheel (Performance Orchestra) or with the key velocity (Standard Orchestra).

Follow the instructions and unzip the wave files, then unzip the sfz scripts (just one of both) in the same directory.

VPO3 requires this little work of unzipping two different files so that you can choose how to control the volume, it’s not the most usual.

The original sfz paths use the windows backslash path notation that didn’tt work for me.

My simple script just fixes them exactly as you say. If you don’t use linux the easiest way to do it would be:
-create a new bank named VPO3

  • upload the unzipped VPO3 directory in your windows computer -the one containing wave files and sfz
    -open the menu Interface->Terminal and copy the following instructions inside the terminal, assuming the dir is called VPO3:
cd /zynthian/zynthian-my-data/soundfonts/sfz/VPO3
find . -name \*.sfz -exec sed --in-place 's,\\,/,g' '{}' \;
find . -name \*.sfz -exec dos2unix '{}' \;

And then it should work :slight_smile:

Best!
Pau

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Hey!

A huge thank you for this Pau: now it is crystal-clear how to proceed to get VPO3 installed correctly :+1: :100:

It slipped off my memory and attention that THERE is a Zynthian terminal window, directly accessible from Webconfig.
I more and more realise how proficient in system management you Linux people are! (I just need to find the time to close this gap in the future, becoming myself more Linuxy! :wink:)

All the best, and thanks again,

Paolo

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