Adjust the volume of a group of soundfonts

• AR 1 0

  Message from Alice Revlon on …
  Hi all, i wonder if Polyphone would allow me to put all my sf2 instruments on the same level of volume. Some of them are very loud vs the others, and this is quite annoying !.
  Thanks in advance for the info !
• ZI 190 0

  Message from ziyametedemircan on …
  This is a long subject and not an easy task. But if you're keen on getting things done, take a look at this article:
  
  Attenuation values ​​(dB) in a Soundfont 
  
  Note: As you will see in the last video on the page, while playing these tests, we have to press the very end of the key (127 velocity) on the virtual piano keyboard of the Polyphone software.
• BO 282 13

  Message from bottrop on …
  tell some more about these sf2's .
  how many fonts
  how many Presets
  
  regards bottrop
• 57 0

  Message from Michael on …
  Unfortunately this really depends of the samples and it can be quite time-consuming to fix this.
  
  The easiest thing you can try at first is to select all samples within the Samples section. Then you go to the toolbox in the menubar where you can find the option "change volume". Select there the option "Normalize" (leave the number 99 unaltered). When you want to try this I strongly advise you to make a backup of the original soundfont, so that you can go back when the result is not what you've wanted.
  
  Like Bottrop said you can adjust the volume with "attenuation" which you can find in the instrument section and the preset section. The higher the number the more the volume of the samples decreases. The parameters you can enter refer to the amount of decrease in dB. With each 6 dB you'll bring down the volume to 50%. (So 12 dB is equal to 25% etc).
  
  The difficulty with digital sound is it's percieved loudness depends of multiple factors. Let me show you an example with this image:
  
  https://images2.imagebam.com/2a/e1/a4/a7d00f1374234468.png " />
  This represents two copies of the same sound. They will both percieved as equally loud. And yet the upper one is normalized to 100% while the bottom one is normalized to 50%. That's because only the transients (the peaks) are different in amplitude. When you normalise both sounds to 100% the bottom one will be percieved as twice as loud.
  
  A better indicator for the percieved loudness of the sound is the so-called RMS-volume: this stands for the amount of energy over a period of time and is more indicative to measure up the loudness of the sound.
  
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  When I want to edit the samples of a soundfont I often export them so I can open and edit them in an external audio editor such as Audacity. Many sound editors can display the RMS volume of a sound with another color within the actual amplitude.
  
  When I want to import the edited samples back into the soundfont I do it as follows. First I'll create a new soundfont with Polyphone and there I'll import the samples. Then I'll copy all samples in the Samples section which I can paste into the Samples section of the soundfont they're belongin to.
  
  When I want to import the edited samples directly within the soundfont they're belonging to then all stereo-samples will become monophonic with the left channel.
  
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  This is probably not the answer you've hoped for. Creating quality soundfonts requires a certain amount of knowledge about audio editing and can be very time-consuming.
• CS 73 0

  Message from csw900 on …
  I am working with pipe organ samples.
  
  When multiple notes (say 20) are all played at the same time there is the probability that clipping of the peaks will occur.
  
  Is it better to limit the volume by normalising the samples near to their peak amplitude and then attenuating the presets or to reduce the amplitude of the samples by say 18db and not to attenuate the presets?
  
  I have seen both approaches in various sample sets but which is the better way to do it?
  
  csw900

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