I bought an X-Fi a couple of weeks ago, and I soon realized that midi effects controllers cc91 and cc93 (reverb and chorus) didn't work with the X-Fi hardware synths. I called CL Technical support about this and this is the response I got: "I have spoken with our testers who say that the CC91-Reverb and CC93-Chorus amounts are set in the SF2 file. That value is typically set to hit 20% at maximum CC data entry (127). To work around this, you will need to use NRPNs to set the amount to a greater level, or edit the SF2 content itself. Please let me know if this information helps." No, it doesn't help, reverb and chorus effects in midi files are set with midi controllers #91 and #93, this is true of virtually every midi file available on the internet, including commercial midi files. CL's testers are wrong. SF2 files have embedded minimum amounts of reverb and chorus for certain patches, midi song files customize the amounts of reverb and chorus with controller’s cc91 and cc93 to suit each particular song, and even changes it during the song. Adding NRPN's involves editing the midi file by calculating the MSB and LSB for each desired value and adding four controllers for every channel of every song every time you want a change in the effects. Controller cc91 and cc93 have control sliders or knobs in every major audio/midi multitrack program and these require no editing. A midi synth that ignores this loses much of its realism, and this just isn't acceptable for those of us who make serious use of midi song files. I have several thousand midi files and it would take months or even years to edit them all. This is a bug that may only affect a small percentage of X-Fi users, but for those it affects, it's a major bug. From the response I received from tech support, it appears that they aren't planning to do anything about it, so I thought I would publicize the issue here and see if I can't change their minds. I drove a 120 mile round trip and paid $140 for my X-Fi and I've had to pull it out of my computer and put my Audigy back in. I'm not a happy camper at this point, but if CL is going to fix the issue, I'm willing to wait for a while because I think the X-Fi is worth it.
Bookmarks