TOPIC: Can one validate sf2 and/or list contents

Sometimes I use the PolyPhone soundfont editor to make a new soundfont. For instance, I often need to make a soundfont with just one "preset" and it must be at the first position, i.e. 000:000. (I'm trying to make the smallest possible soundfont with just this "preset", including whatever samples it uses.)

Sometimes after doing this, another program that uses soundfonts doesn't play the notes or finds them invalid. Of course, that could be because the soundfont that I started with was bad or there could be a problem with the program I am trying to use it with. (It's my own software, under development.)

So I wish there was a way to tell whether a soundfont was valid short of playing all the patches at all the notes, etc.

Hi Bruce,

It's easy on my side to test if a soundfont is valid but not if an external editor is valid for reading a soundfont. Not sure I can help with this...

I would say that all soundfonts edited with Polyphone are correct - following the specs - otherwise I would have had a lot of complains about it so try to debug your code in order to know where the keys are not triggering sounds. It can be for example: if the velocity or key range is not defined, it should be considered to be the default range [0;127].

Oh, I wasn't casting any dispersions on Polyphony. It seems like a really fine and necessary product in my opinion and I am glad to be able to use it.

I was more thinking of "garbage-in, garbage-out". In other words, I was worried that if I had an sf2 on unknown origin that had some things wrong with it, I might still be able to edit it with Polyphony, but some flaw in the original might still exist in the Polyphone output. For instance, if I were trying to make an sf2 with just one preset, as I often do these days, if there was a structural flaw in the original, it might just be passed on into the output.

But. at this point, it's more likely my program in development, which I'm working on right now. In iOS, the firmware and classes for sf2 seem to date wayback, including Apple DLS things. I'm glad to have it, hope to find the same on Android some day, but it is difficult to find much in the way of examples or documentation, aside from some excellent stuff from Gene De Lisa and Eric Ford. If you know of others about iOS sf2 coding, do tell.