[SOLVED] Studio Instruments & SFZ Files

Can someone explain how SI vst’s handle .prog and SFZ files? I see where most patches are prog files but there’s also a folder with SFZ and wav files. Thanks.

All the sfz engine synths (including SI Suite) use the "Multisamples Folder" to look up sample and sfz files that have relative paths in the .prog files. There is another registry entry which should contain the same "Multisamples Folder" path in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Cakewalk Music Software\Studio Instruments\Bass. Not sure what happens if the 32bit and 64bit entries are not the same. But I do know if the "Multisamples" folder is missing when the synth is added to a project, it will throw errors. If the "Multisamples" folder is removed after the synth is added, it will error the next time the project is loaded or when a new program tries to load a sample or sfz file. The synth will not create missing files on the fly. If files are missing, the synth will error.
 
There is minimal program file management in the SI Suite. The SI interfaces do not provide a way to add/modify samples or sfz files used by the programs but it is possible to save changes to the controls on the UI.
 
I have once again tested and verified SI Bass supports altering samples and sfz files loaded by its program. Did not attempt to hack a program file though. That is not a reasonable activity. Keep in mind some sfz files use encryption for their samples. Attempting to swap samples for an sfz with an encryption opcode will not work without either encrypting the samples or removing the encryption opcode from the sfz file. In short, it is possible to change

• the samples an sfz references,
• the references to samples in sfz files,
• where sfz files look for samples with absolute paths.

 
WRT hacking prog files, if the user actually used Notepad (note that is not what he says but claims Notepad would work), he was lucky. Using a text editor to change binary files is risky. Even making direct edits to binary files with a hex editor can produce unexpected results. Hacking binary files is not a user level activity.
 
With all that said, keep in mind the original intent of the SI plug-ins. They are simple sfz engine synths designed to work with factory supplied content and the ability to save changes to the UI controls as new presets. There is no facility for adding samples or creating new programs based on different samples or sfz files.

It is doable at the cost of the existing samples.

First, it is to figure out which sfz files are used by the program. Notepad can work in this case although to be safe DO NOT SAVE the prog files after looking at them.


Aggressive Picking.prog is a good one to look at as it is refers to a good sfz to modify (one sfz file, no encrypted samples). Here is what the prog looks like in Notepad:

Notice there is a fully qualified sfz file. I cannot say for sure if the path is completely ignored or the sfz search algorithm falls back to the default. My guess is the old path is ignored. Either way, in my PC the prog ultimately loads Velocity Picked.sfz from the default location.
 
The Velocity Picked.sfz is interesting because it makes use of the default_path opcode (red box in image below). If this is changed to an absolute path, the samples may be located anywhere. If that opcode was not used, providing fully qualified names for each sample (blue box in image below) is the other way to have samples in a non-default location.

Because both the red box and blue box use currently use relative paths, these entries are appended to "\Multisamples\" after the path in the "Nultisamples Folder" in the registry.
 
Note: any changes to samples or sfz files should be made before loading the synth or at least the program. All Cakewalk sfz engine synths read samples and sfz into memory when the program is located.

soens
It works!!!... and it IS as easy as it can be.
 
My troubles were all because I was working in 32 bit Sonar. I installed 32 and 64 bit versions of SI and each one has it's own Multisamples folder. However, there's only one set of PROG files in the ProgramData folder and they only refer to "Program Files" not "Program Files(x86)", so no matter how I changed the sfz files or samples in 32 bit SI, nothing was going to change... Makes sense if the PROG files were all written before 64 bit OS's were in wide use.
 

 Good news
 
That is why I mentioned the 32bit registry after realizing the 64bit location did not seem to work in this case. Normally the 32bit and 64bit entries have the same data (so only 1 set of multisamples is installed) but it seems they got out of sync.
 
Since you continue to work in 32bit software keep mindful of the 32bit sections of the registry. This is bound to come up again.