Custom string tuning bug related improvement & complaint

arcadiadiv · Post by **arcadiadiv** » Oct 10, 2013 7:28 pm

Hey, I'm running Earmaster Pro 6 on Mac OSX 10.8.5 and I found a bug when using the custom string tuning. I'm trying to add a 4 string tenor bass string tuning but whenever I raise or lower the pitch of one string, the strings around it moves with it. For example, whenever I raise the pitch of the 4th string the 3rd string will raise which isn't that big but when I raise the 2nd string the 3rd and 1st string will raise in pitch. This makes custom tunings impossible to do at its current state.

Next thing is an improvement to the custom string tunings. I use a lot of custom tunings that aren't offered by default and it would really make my life much easier to be able to add those tunings to the default list so I don't have to keep changing that one as I see fit. Of course I have no idea if this is already possible.

The final thing is a bit of a complaint/suggestion in regards to the sound quality of the sound fonts offered. The guitars just don't sound authentic to me at all. They sound synthesized or artificial. Is there a way to add sounds of my own to something that sounds better to my ears? I plan on sampling the guitar for some software I plan on making anyway, so it would really be awesome if there was a way to replace them on my own.

Quentin · Post by **Quentin** » Oct 14, 2013 4:52 am

Hi,

The 1st thing seems to be a bug in the Mac version. We will fix that in a free update.
The second point you mention (saving custom tunings) would be a great addition. It's now been added to our list of future improvements.

Finally for the sounds, EarMaster can load soundfonts (.sf2 files), which are sound banks made of audio samples (the default sounds in EarMaster are real audio samples). But for stringed instruments, reproducing the richness of a single note to make it sound like it is played by a real guitar or bass is very difficult.
There are thousands of SoundFonts available on the internet which you can load in EarMaster. Some of them only contain bass or guitar samples, and might sound more realistic than the one used by EarMaster. Another option is to create your own soundfont as you suggest. There is a fantastic WIndows application that can let you do that called Viena: http://www.synthfont.com/index.html, but I don't know if anything like that exists on Mac.

arcadiadiv · Post by **arcadiadiv** » Oct 17, 2013 11:00 pm

Yeah I discovered both the location to load a different sound font and viena right after I posted that. I also discovered another called Polyphone (http://www.polyphone.fr/). I couldn't find any mac .sf2 editors at all but I have a windows computer so I guess I can't complain. I'll have to search harder for a mac sound font editor.

Quentin · Post by **Quentin** » Oct 18, 2013 3:07 am

This Polyphone looks like a very nice piece of software, thanks for the link!

Hans · Post by **Hans** » Oct 23, 2013 12:33 am

The problem with the custom string tuning on Mac has been solved and will be available with the next update (in a few days).

Best regards,
Hans Jakobsen
EarMaster

arcadiadiv · Post by **arcadiadiv** » Oct 30, 2013 8:09 am

Hans wrote:The problem with the custom string tuning on Mac has been solved and will be available with the next update (in a few days).

Best regards,
Hans Jakobsen
EarMaster

I can confirm that this has indeed been fixed. Thank you guys, that was really fast!