.sfz format definition?

Where can I access sfzformat.htm,...

This is the proper link: The sfz format: Basics. More information & tutorials: P5 Wiki Virtual Instruments section.

... or obtain an official .sfz specification?

This is as good as it gets. Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User.

The free links will certainly get you started. Once you have some familiarity, opening up DimPro's .sfz files in a text editor is a great resource. The book has a reference section that will take you wherever you want to go.

At the bottom of the The sfz format: Basics page there is a link for examples. I cannot get this link to work. Anyone else having this trouble.

Examples

Example .sfz definition files showing every opcode functionality can be found here.

As a Rapture license owner and user, I asked about the SFZ format here a long time ago in this thread

thread on SFZ format

The resources mentioned above have been very useful for my limited use of the format. My intentions have always been to delve deeper and get into scripting, but I have had too many diversions. I am revisiting it again now, and came here looking to see what is going on now. In fact, before the holidays I finally bought the Cakewalk Synthesizers book just for the chapters on Rapture and SFZ. The Cakewalk Synthesizers book gives a snapshot of the SFZ format but as was stated when I asked about it a while ago, the format is always changing. SFZ's from Cakewalk designed for the latest release of Rapture or Dimension Pro may not read correctly into another program that is supposed to read SFZ format because there might be new opcodes in a version of the SFZ handling code buried in the Cakewalk synthesizers that are not in the "standard."

The problem as I see it, and I could be wrong naturally, is that there is no precisely documented standard that says "SFZ must have these features and anything else is an extension" and there is no way other than familiarity, reference and bug tracking, etc. of determining whether a certain opcode is an extension belonging to Cakewalk or someone else or is part of the nebulous SFZ standard.

The base SFZ format as I understand it is a very nice format, text based, easy to script, etc. As such it has grown in popularity recently and has been adopted by other companies including Camel Audio, Wusik, DangerousBear, and others. It is available as a conversion format in Extreme Sample Converter. I think that the electronic music community would benefit greatly from an easily reachable, regularly updated online resource that documents the current SFZ standard, tracks old versions of the standard, keeps release notes for each new release of the standard, etc so that we can all be on the same page. I am thinking in terms of something like an old-fashioned programming language or class compliance standard. From a business standpoint I think that such a standard would be good for business for Cakewalk and also for other developers that use the standard.

Thanks for listening!

Does the P5 Wiki no longer exist?

Possibly.  It may be down temporarily (once again), or it may have followed the path of its namesame.
Most (if not all) of the virtual instruments information have been mirrored here.

There was a perfectly good format for this kind of thing complete with editors and that was soundfont. What the hell was wrong with that? We have the complete spec for soundfont with all the dev tools and all. ppfftt

You know what's funny, the sfz format was originally crafted exactly to overcome the limitations in the SoundFont spec.
When the freeware sfz player was released, five years ago, there was only one editor for SoundFonts (Vienna Studio), and it required you to have installed a Sound Blaster card. SoundFonts did not support 24-bit samples, and all sampes needed to be included within the .sf2 file (so no sharing between sets, no external editing, etc.). SoundFonts didn't disk-stream, and lacked all kinds of sample switching and triggering extensions such as release triggering, control or keyboard switching (a.k.a. 'dimensions' in GigaStudio).
Playing a .sf2 file at that time was mostly limited to Sound Blaster cards. A few samplers played sf2 files, but only supported a minimal subset of the format functionality.

In regards to the tools, the goal of sfz was exactly that: it doesn't need a tool (or if you want, it just needs Notepad). It's based on the samples themselves, and a text file.
This is certainly not for everyone: end-users will most likely prefer to tweak knobs and sliders. Sfz isn't good for this (and it was never a goal). On the other hand, creating massive libraries of samples via scripting isn't possible with knobs, and sfz excels here. Horses...


-rgc

Rene - any views on why Cakewalk makes it so difficult to get hold of definitions for sfz?  It seems every few weeks someone posts when they are struggling with broken links, out-of-date material, etc. and no-one from Cakewalk has even taken the trouble to make a sticky here, say.  Cock-up or conspiracy?  Will there be another synth that uses the expression engine or is it a moribund platform?

Rene
 
I can't say this will change for sfz in the near future, but we have some alternative ideas as to make this better.

 
There's one improvement to conventional practice that could be made ... one which wouldn't change the sfz spec one bit.  I've just been reading the manual for the Alchemy softsynth.  It explicitly states what sfz features are supported.  It's a short list, but has the essential elements for defining multisamples.  Anyone who intends to put together sfz files for use with Alchemy will be grateful that this was published by those who know exactly what's supported.   It'll save lots of trial and error for those who have no idea and no way of learning (apart from time-wasting experimentation).  It would be nice to think that the Camel Audio example will motivate other vendors of sfz compatible software to do the same.
 
Just my 2 cents.
 
 

there was  a ruby script someone did to make the task of making the sfz's a bit more straight forward to make , but the person in question didn't post back much .

it was looking promising, you'd give it a folder to explore (mainly computer music mag disks) and it'd  generate the sfz's , from the sample names.

e.g. sawtoothC0 , sawtoothC1 etc

would be put on their respective key / mapped.

IMHO thats the side that puts people off messing around with SFZ's a lot of people just want something editing wise that maybe can be done in a few clicks / drag & drop..

it's like some things are made hhmm tricky.. drum maps is another one.. why can't it just generate them off SFZ's.. is one example..

anyways, I think more see it as a rompler , because the editing side is well dis-jointed from it.

slartabartfast

It would be nice to think that the Camel Audio example will motivate other vendors of sfz compatible software to do the same.

+

I think dmbaer is trying to say: Post a list of what opcodes are usable in which of your synths so we do not have to do reverse engineering every damn time we try to use it.

That sounds like a good idea for a community project page in the Wikis given the lack of such info directly from Cakewalk.

I apologize for this inconvenience.

No apology needed, of course.  I guess that an optimistic view would be that Cakewalk is being more generous than other developers by giving those who are interested an insight into at least the first layer of inner workings of the Expression Engine synths, so we are better off in that respect.  And, of course, you wouldn't expect sfz specs to have mass appeal any way.  I agree that Simon's book is very useful, although it has been around for a while now.  Maybe Simon would like to publish updated information via his website

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr08/articles/sonartech_0408.htm

IMHO, the main correspondence between SF2 and SFZ is that the first two letters are SF.  Otherwise, they are quite different.  One of the most significant differences is that SF2 has the audio samples embedded in it, whereas SFZ does not, instead having text-based "pointers" to the samples (which therefore must be located where the SFZ says they are located).