Adding or Replacing Sound Fonts

[J.E.D., I]

Hello everyone. I'm new to the forum and this is my first post/question.

Is anyone else having trouble adding/replacing sound fonts on CFX? The files I'm trying to add to the board are; WAV, 16 bit and 44100 sample rate. I had to alter the original files in Audacity to get the 16 bit and 44100 sample rate, but the board still seems to skip over them. Any suggestions?

[erv]

If you purchased that font, there is a large chance that the format is/was correct.
Make sure you place the font with the right folder structure (numbered).
Logs will also tell you which fonts are browsed and looked-up / parsed

[J.E.D., I]

Thank you Erv for your prompt response. I discovered what the issue was.

I was attempting to add a (pstoff1) to a sound font that I purchased. The pstoff1 is OBIJUAN saying "May the force be with you always." I altered the original file with Audacity and made a WAV @ 16 bit, 44100. CFX wouldnt play it.

I doubled checked everything and found out that the file was only being sampled at 88 kbps. I changed the project output (in addtition to preferences in the settings) in Audacity to 44100 and then the file was sampled at 705 kbps. CFX played it fine.

So, no issues with CFX it was my error in adjusting the settings in Audacity.

If someone has a similiar issue in the future, click on properties of the WAV file. If the kbps is low, like, (88) CFX wont play it. It should be 325 or higher if its truly being sampled at 44100 hz.

[jedbadda]

I had the same issue. I was exporting WAV at 44000 instead of 44100.

[timewarp]

Please excuse me. I am new to CFX and to this forum. I have not yet tried programming the board. Several people I've talked to about this tell me different things.  I think I'm having the same issue as the people above. What I'm trying to do is relatively simple, I think. Here goes.

I was reading the CFX manual, and on page 15, Erv says:

"Polyphonic / monophonic font (backward) compatibility with existing fonts."

So does that in fact mean that earlier Plecter fonts can be used on a CFX card after all?


This was a a response to a font compatibility question I asked Erv Plecter on one of his YouTube sites a while back:
"Older fonts are mostly monophonic, hence pre-mixed, reason why you can't just drop in new files. However, they work just fine on the CFX which handles both polyphonic and monophonic. Default package still has about half of untouch fonts from CF9 era. There's nothing preventing you to touch-up a font. Most people are now making polyphonic fonts that allow, by nature, mix and match of sounds (aside the hum + smoothswing pairs, which are designed to match)."


If so, does that mean I would be able to use my old fonts?

Or does that mean "provided that", I set those fonts up in the form that he describes in the paragraph previous to that:

"16 bits / 44.1 kHz sample rate multi-track, low latency motion to sound (4.6 to 6ms motion to clash sound) with backward compatibility with 22.050 kHz sounds (monophonic font main player should have at least hum and Fx with the same SR, otherwise, non-mixed sounds can mix SR)" (Not sure what that means.)


After Googling around, I did find that it's possible to convert music files to 16 bits / 44.1 kHz fairly easily using iTunes. (I have a 2013  iMac running OSX Mojave.)



I checked my older fonts (all of them Plecter). When I click on "Get Info", I see that they are all 16 bit, 22 kHz (does it matter if it's 22 k HZ vs 22.050 kHz)? Some are CF9, some older. So given that Erv says "...backward compatibility with 22.050 kHz sounds", would I even need to convert them to 44.1 kHz at all? (Although, using iTunes to do it, as discussed above, looks pretty easy.)

I'm primarily interested in only importing any files that contain quotes, e.g., some boot sounds, combos, (some  of which are in subfolders of fonts that I have), etc. , not necessarily entire fonts. (Most new CFX fonts have fewer such files than the older fonts, and many font makers haven't updated their old fonts to CFX.)
I gather from the manual that iSabers will be involved in this. (And possibly /tracks subfolder.


Another question. Does anyone know whether there are "pre-arranged templates" that one can use where one can fill in the parameters that one likes? (Hope I'm making sense on this one.) Some of the special effects that people show in their YouTube videos look really impressive, but they don't show how they programmed the board to get them. (I've seen some instructions on pp. 15 - 17.)

As I said, I'm a total newbie to this stuff, and I don't want to screw things up, particularly since my new CFX saber is currently working just fine.


Sorry for the long post but, as I said, I really don't want to screw this up.

[erv]

Based on the fact older fonts are pre mixed with hum, you can't add new files to an old font without mixing a bit of the hum (usually the last 3 seconds of the hum is a classic strategy as that's where the loop point is located and hum is resumed from start).

If you want to add files or sound slots to an existing font, you need to do this on a polyphonic font. You can also edit existing fonts (even monophonic) by adding/mixing sound (in)to them. Audacity does that perfectly.

CFX is indeed compatible with older (monophonic fonts). As stated, those need a coherent sample rate over the font since the player is switching between fx and hum. It could play 44.1KHz fonts monophonic as well, but none of those were made this way back in the day (22.050 kHz fonts back then). Upsampling those from 22050 to 44100 would bring no benefit neither.