VST to SF2 ( Extreme Sample Converter )

[SteelBreeze]

Sorry for bumping an old thread. Sharp, can I mail\PM you for some tips about looping points for various types of samples (Organs, strings etc.) and more things that I find frustrating in looping with ESC?
Thanks for tutorial!

[Sharp]

Why not post your questions on the forum so others can benefit from the discussion.

Regards
Sharp.

[SteelBreeze]

Alright then. I need to sample a Hammond sound from the Colossus plugin by East-West via Kontakt. I sample every note cromatically with a length of 4 seconds. After numerous times of applying automatic loop points and even crossfades at export, I hear clicks and many samples have a worse loop than others, where the loops are perfect. The samples were generated via the Real-Time VST Convertor in ESC, so the initial material is more than fine. In the end, the results so far are simply uneven. What am I doing wrong?

[Sharp]

Chances are your cross-fade value is too high and that your trying to cross-fade data that simply doesn't exist in over your Loop.

For example, if your sample is 4 seconds long, and your Loop Starts at 1 second, and Loop End is at 4 seconds, then the time between 0 and 1 seconds is where the Cross-fade data is pulled from.

So in this situation, the maximum cross-fade value you can enter is 25% (1 second / 44100 samples at 44.1Khz) Anything more than that and your trying to cross-fade with data that simply doesn't exist. Which will most certainly result in a Popping Loop.

If you want to post a single wave file that's giving you trouble, I can loop it for you so you can see.

Regards
Sharp.

[SteelBreeze]

Thanks Sharp. Got the result I wanted.

[MusicianSickness]

You are a boss sharp. Why isnt this post pinned for permanent reading?
Or maybe it is...
Anyhow cheers!

[Shahrokh]

Hi all.
Here's a guide on how to convert a VST into a SF2 for use on your KRONOS, using Extreme Sample Converter.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Dear Sharp, seems I can't access the content for some reason, writes "forbidden...", am I doing something wrong or is this on a restricted area? Thank you.

[Sharp]

Dear Sharp, seems I can't access the content for some reason, writes "forbidden...", am I doing something wrong or is this on a restricted area? Thank you.

It's working fine for me. Maybe you just caught the server at a bad time. Try again.

Regards
Sharp.

[Jesus]

Hello, thank you for this very good guide. I have a little problem though!
I've manage to sample some kontakt instruments. Some of them though don't play at all. The difference that I can see (since the procedure is the same) is that the non working sounds (in Kronos) shows 2 oscillators instead of 1 that shows the working ones.
Any idea?

[Sharp]

Best to try look for the cause of the problem by going to Sampling mode first and seeing if your loaded data is actually playable as a raw mutilsample.

If it is not, then there's something wrong with your creation of the SF2 file.

Some things that may pose a problem are too many velocity layers in your SF2 file, or your key map is not the same for each velocity, which is Impossible to do if your only using Extreme Sample Convert, but is very possible if your after introducing some other program into the process. Also if your raw sample name is too long, that confuses the KRONOS and it skips loading samples. Solution, use very short names because ESC is going to add it's own additional names to the files it generates to indicate Note Value and Velocity.

If your raw multisamples were playable in Sample mode, but the PROG sounds don't work. Then chances are you have too many velocity layers and the KRONOS is making a bags of trying to convert it to a usable PROG sound. Simple way to fix this is to forget about the PROG sound that was auto generated and just assign the raw multisamples to the PROG sound yourself by hand.

Regards
Sharp.

[janrhansen]

Thanks for a good tutorial James .. Honestly, I would never had figured out you had to calculate the loop and x-fade settings that way.

There is no where in the manual they describe this

I have a question. This is working fine for pad, organ and other continous sounds, but how do you deal with a plucked or Piano sound. The 9 seconds should be enough for most situations to capture the full sustain of most sounds .. maybe the deep strings of a Piano could need 12, but here is my problem:

I found a cheap .sf2 with some samplings of a very common Roland synth. Now my problem with that was, most samplings sounded actually fairly good, compared to what it cost me, but there were very little work went (practically nothing) into looping the samples, so I loaded a guitar sound up in ESC to see if I could get it to behave better, but the problem is ESC (and also Kontakt) will mostly choose a loop point in the absolute end of the decay where there is almost no sound left. I did manage to get some samples autolooped decently .. not great but usable, but going thru every samplw and loop them manually is time consuming and not really worth all that trouble for something in this quality range.

Is there an easy way of working with decaying sounds, where its difficult to find a "sustain" area where the start and end of the loop is somewhat the same volume. I have been trying to sample from one of my Kontakt guitar libraries, but I usually end up with very short loops where, even you manage to loop it without pops it just dosn't sound naturally. its not too difficult to resample some power chords where you can just use the sample as 1hit, but sampling a guitar sound for playing normally melody where you want it to not just die out is proving something of a big project when your kinda newbie into sampling, and also a perfectionist like me