FluidSynth

Article summary

FluidSynth, formerly named iiwusynth, is a free open source software synthesizer which converts MIDI note data into an audio signal using SoundFont technology without need for a SoundFont-compatible soundcard. FluidSynth can act as a virtual MIDI device, able to receive MIDI data from any program and transform it into audio on-the-fly. It can also read in SMF (.mid) files directly. On the output side, it can send audio data directly to an audio device for playback, or to a Raw or Wave file. It can also convert a SMF file directly to an audio file in faster-than-real-time. The combination of these features gives FluidSynth the following major use cases: * Synthesizing MIDI data from another application directly to the speakers, * Synthesizing MIDI data from another application, recording the output to an audio file, * The MIDI data for either of the above can be received from an application, or a MIDI controller device (e.g keyboard / pads) attached to the computer (e.g. USB or Bluetooth) or received over a network, * Playing a MIDI file to the speakers, * Converting a MIDI file to a digital audio file. The size of loaded SoundFont banks is limited by the amount of RAM available. There is a GUI for FluidSynth called Qsynth, which is also open source. Both are available in most Linux distributions, and can also be compiled for Windows.…

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