*X-FI SOUNDFONT AND EFFECT BUGS* still remain unfixed

[dwh]

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milesmusic wrote:

You can play soundfonts. However, if you run out of polyphony it just stops working. Most samplers including the Audigy and Soundblaster chips intelligently cut off the oldest voice. Not the X-fi. Thus, the usable polyphony is actually better with the older cards.

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Actually, I don't think you're right about the SBAudigy. When it came out, there were loud complaints of polyphony problems because the drivers cut off the oldest voice, which could easily be a held foreground note. It was changed to be like the old SBLive drivers, which were based on cutting off the highest-numbered active midi channel, which gives the soundfont composer more ability to control things by assigning the most important instruments to the lowest-numbered channels.

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You can use the ASIO drivers. With the X-fi you can set them as low as 1ms latency and they work.

However, if you try to use soundfonts at the same time the ASIO drivers will crash. Even with latency set to 100ms or more. This makes it pretty much useless for recording if you thought you were going to be able to use Soundfonts.

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You appear to be assuming that this is happening to anyone who tries it because it's happening to you. Are you sure? I watch this group pretty closely, and it seems doubtful I wouldn't have heard about this previously here if something that blatent was wrong that wasn't actually caused by either system corruption or side effects of a bug in something else entirely that's installed in your particular computer.

-Dave
dwh@cfcl.com

[milesmusic]

Thank you DWH for a more accurate explanation of how polyphony management should be handled.

I can confirm from my tests that (at least for me) the X-fi does not implement this scheme at all, but rather simply stops responding to new MIDI notes when it runs out of polyphony.

Tests were performed using repeated long decay notes on MIDI channel 1.

And I cannot state whether or not I am alone in experiencing this particular bug. If DWH can state that he did this test and it worked fine for him, I would like to know. It would certainly seem from the posts on this board that I am not the only one experiencing problems with the X-fi. Even the text accompanying the beta driver alludes to many problems, and admits that many remain unsolved.

I can state with certainty that this exact same computer functions as it should with the older Audigy 2ZS installed. This would seem to point to the X-fi card and/or its drivers as the problem. I tried three driver releases (CD, latest public release and beta release).

I am only a newbie on this board, not in the use of computers, soundfonts, or Creative Labs cards,nor in the field of music production. I troubleshoot audio gear for a living, and have used soundfonts and Creative cards recreationally for several years.

I purchased the X-fi specifically for the onboard Soundfont synth and published ASIO performance. The actual performance did not live up to expectations. Granted, no soundfont performance specs were published, so perhaps expecting comparable performance to the previous generation of cards was unrealistic on my part.

[bennetng]

I tried and X-Fi WILL response to new voices even if it runs out of polyphony. However there are really some glitches in the polyphony handling mechanism of X-Fi. X-Fi users can download the file below and try it out.

http://www.geocities.co.jp/anothergs/X-Fi_poly.zip

The first part is a group of slow strings (more than 150 voices) in low velocity and a solo in high velocity. The second part is the same solo without that group of slow strings. It clearly shows that in the first part, the solo has glitches, and if you use a sequencer to examine the structure of the test midi file you will know that the X-Fi cannot utilize complete 128 voices.

This test is performed with the latest beta driver.

I know that CL staffs will ignore this kind of bug report. They are hopeless. I only post this for other users to read.

[milesmusic]

Bennet, thanks. I am not sure they are not listening. I think it is just a lower priority. There were many problems for gamers which is the biggest marketshare so they fix those first. Typically they fix it all but it is very slow. Like with Audigy, now the drivers are working right, but it took a few years.
Only the infamous 4GB memory claim remains unfixed, although I am told that under Windows Server 2003 you can get access to >500MB of RAM for soundfonts, more than the ~340MB under Windows XP/98. So Windows is partly to blame there as Creative claimed.
I try not to be too mad at Creative, but I sold X-Fi since it is not working for me.

[Mitsaras]

I had frequent e-mails with the Creative's tech support. Amongst other e-mails, I reported abou the soundfont issue.

The tech support's reply, was that "the developers never ever heard of any soundfont bugs".

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Message Edited by Mitsaras on 07-21-2006 11:50 PM

[perihelion54]

Yeah, I was actually directed to contact the developers directly about the SoundFont issues.
So they can't say they haven't heard anything about SF problems!

And the new driver didn't fix anything SF related.