midi plugin clipping with loud midis

2010-11-26 20:52:07

Hi,
I haven't been using Foobar for very long, just got back into it after having moved to Winamp, now I plan to use both.
The midi plugin is good, I'm using it with some soundfonts I have, but with loud midis it clips terribly. Turning the volume down in Foobar doesn't help, while the volume is quieter, it still distorts. The midi is actually very loud, that's probably why.
I've tried the exact same midis with the exact same soundfonts in other players like xM Play. There's no clipping, actually the volume could be a lot louder than it is without any trouble, but it sounds dry. With Fluid Synth, I can hear the effects all right, but the whole thing just sounds like a badly compressed, clipping mess. Is there any way to turn the volume down?
Thanks in advance.

midi plugin clipping with loud midis

Reply #1 – 2010-11-27 18:53:07

Activate the Advanced Limiter DSP. All synthesizers except for the Emu de MIDI mode mix in floating point, so there is no clipping as long as you use such a DSP, or use floating point output in Windows 7.

midi plugin clipping with loud midis

Reply #2 – 2010-11-27 20:34:47

Hi,
I tried the advanced limiter thing, while it did prevent the distortion it made everything sound like we were having a loudness war competition. So I tried the equalizer, I adjusted all the bands by the same amount, and everything's fine!
Since I probably won't be using Foobar for most other filetypes, I think this will work pretty well. Perhaps a later version of the midi plugin can have its own volume control? I wonder if the plugin developer is on this forum.
thanks again for the suggestion. It's nice to know that dsp plugins can help with that sort of thing.

midi plugin clipping with loud midis

Reply #3 – 2010-11-27 21:07:05

^^^^I believe you are speaking to him

midi plugin clipping with loud midis

Reply #4 – 2010-11-28 01:45:31

Using the preamp slider for tracks with no ReplayGain information will also work.