4.2. Using soundfonts

Soundfonts can be loaded on soundcard, or used with a soft synthetizer.

4.2.1. With Soundblaster soundcard

If you have a Soundblaster soundcard, install a package named awesfx. This package should contain the asfxload application. This little tool will help us to load the soundfonts in the soundcard.

Once you have downloaded and uncompressed your soundfont, just execute something like asfxload /tmp/fluidr3.sf2, and wait for a while.

A software like Rosegarden is able to load sounfount for you at startup (see Section 5.4).

4.2.2. With other soundcards

It exists a lot of pretty good synthetizers. Some of them have more features than others, but most of them allow you to load your own soundfonts. In those examples we will use one of the DSSI plugins we have built: fluidsynth-dssi.so (see Section 3.4), and QSynth (see Section 3.6).

4.2.2.1. Testing with DSSI plugins

To use directly DSSI plugins you must at first launch Jack server. To do that, just execute Qjackctl as normal user (see Section 5.1). Then we use the Jack DSSI host program to load and execute the Fluidsynth DSSI plugin with jack-dssi-host fluidsynth-dssi.so. You will see a little graphic interface.

Figure 4-1. Fluidsynth DSSI plugin graphic interface

Click on the Load Soundfont... button to load a soundfont, choose any instrument and click on Send test note to hear its sound.

4.2.2.2. Testing with QSynth

First, execute Qjackctl as normal user (see Section 5.1) to launch Jack server. Then execute QSynth. In fact, QSynth, like other audio software, can run with or without Jack, directly using OSS, ALSA etc.

Figure 4-2. QSynth graphic interface

Click on the Setup button, go to the Soundfonts notebook and load at least one soundfont. Now QSynth is ready for giving us sound when we will need it (see Section 5.4.2).