Gmsynth plugin and pan

[atux]

Hi all,

using the “Grand Piano” patch of the General MIDI Synth plugin, I noticed that the pan is unbalanced to the right. Why is the stereo not centered?
[Ardour 8.1]
a.

[SpotlightKid]

As is often the case with keyboard instruments, the panning actually changes from left to right across the keyboard / note range, as it would on a real acoustic piano.

[atux]

Yes, but so much?

For example, an ascending chromatic scale (the panning changes from left to right, like you said):

When listening, the effect seems exaggerated to me. Am I wrong?

[edogawa (Edgar Aichinger)]

It’s a well aged open source stereo multisampled instrument, probably modified by Robin or someone else to match GM specs instead of the original Roland/GS mapping… you can load the sf2 soundfont in a SF2 editor like polyphone and see how it’s built, panning is left alone from what I can see.at a quick glance.
For an official Ardour bundle the path to the soundfont would be /opt/Ardour-version/lib/LV2/gmsynth.lv2/GeneralUser_LV2.sf2

[x42 (Robin Gareus)]

@edogawa

It’s a well aged open source stereo multisampled instrument, probably modified by Robin or someone else to match GM specs instead of the original Roland/GS mapping

The soundfont used by General MIDI Synth plugin is a Roland GS and General MIDI (GM) compatible SoundFont.

See gmsynth.lv2/sf2 at master · x42/gmsynth.lv2 · GitHub

[edogawa (Edgar Aichinger)]

sorry then, all references I found in a quick search for GeneralUser soundfont only mentioned GS

[atux]

@edogawa

gmsynth.lv2

Thank you.
The path for me is this:
/home/.lv2/gmsynth.lv2/GeneralUser_LV2.sf2

Opening it in Polyphone, the values ​​grow linearly from -34 to +34.
But it’s strange, it doesn’t proceed note by note, but uses groups of notes. This is not clear to me.
a.

[edogawa (Edgar Aichinger)]

I’d just accept the way it is, right click the channel panner widget, switch to “equal power stereo” and reduce stereo width…

[x42 (Robin Gareus)]

@atux

Opening it in Polyphone, the values ​​grow linearly from -34 to +34.
But it’s strange, it doesn’t proceed note by note, but uses groups of notes. This is not clear to me.

A wild guess: It may be grouped by the sample used for a given note-range in order to prevent artifacts when playing those simultaneously with different panning.

Then again it could also just be simplicity. The GeneralUser soundfont, amazing as it is, does make compromises to fit a complete GM/GS compatible sound set into just 30 MB.

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You may find some piano only soundfonts that easily exceed 1GB, or the Crisis GeneralMIDI sf2 which clocks in at 1.6 GB…