About the fork

Although FluidSynth is rock-stable and has always been the best free and open source software synthesizer available, the official repository of the project has been inactive for a while. The goal of this fork is to revive the project by...

Removing dependency on glib. Glib is a comprehensive library and fluidsynth only make little use of it (mainly the multi-thread support). As the multi-thread solution has been integrated into programming languages as a language feature, there's no point of using glib's implementation. We can finally get rid of the huge glob of glib, which might take a whole day to compile on some particular platforms.
Making it GM2 compatible. FluidSynth doesn't fully support the GM2 standard by default.
Implementing missing features. It seems that modulators in sf2 doesn't work in FluidSynth. This is painful because even if FluidSynth doesn't implement GM2 CC's, it should support GM2 compatible soundfonts that does the modulation via sf2 modulators.
Resolving licensing issues by rewriting infringing modules. Read details of the issue here. ~~This will be always in the list unless it is solved by the original developers.~~

Other changes include:

Complete removal of the automake based build system. It is year 2017, after all.

Chris Xiong, 2017

The original README file starts below.

Introduction

FluidSynth is a software real-time synthesizer based on the Soundfont 2 specifications.

FluidSynth reads and handles MIDI events from the MIDI input device. It is the software analogue of a MIDI synthesizer. FluidSynth can also play midifiles using a Soundfont.

Information on the web

The place to look if you are looking for the latest information on FluidSynth is the web site at http://www.fluidsynth.org/.

Why did we do it

The synthesizer grew out of a project, started by Samuel Bianchini and Peter Hanappe, and later joined by Johnathan Lee, that aimed at developing a networked multi-user game.

Sound (and music) was considered a very important part of the game. In addition, users had to be able to extend the game with their own sounds and images. Johnathan Lee proposed to use the Soundfont standard combined with an intelligent use of midifiles. The arguments were:

Wave table synthesis is low on CPU usage, it is intuitive and it can produce rich sounds
Hardware acceleration is possible if the user owns a Soundfont compatible soundcard (important for games!)
MIDI files are small and Soundfont2 files can be made small thru the intelligent use of loops and wavetables. Together, they are easier to downloaded than MP3 or audio files.
Graphical editors are available for both file format: various Soundfont editors are available on PC and on Linux (Smurf!), and MIDI sequencers are available on all platforms.

It seemed like a good combination to use for an (online) game.

In order to make Soundfonts available on all platforms (Linux, Mac, and Windows) and for all sound cards, we needed a software Soundfont synthesizer. That is why we developed FluidSynth.

Design decisions

The synthesizer was designed to be as self-contained as possible for several reasons:

It had to be multi-platform (Linux, MacOS, Win32). It was therefore important that the code didn't rely on any platform specific library.
It had to be easy to integrate the synthesizer modules in various environements, as a plugin or as a dynamically loadable object. I wanted to make the synthesizer available as a plugin (jMax, LADSPA, Xmms, WinAmp, Director, ...); develop language bindings (Python, Java, Perl, ...); and integrate it into (game) frameworks (Crystal Space, SDL, ...). For these reasons I've decided it would be easiest if the project stayed very focussed on it's goal (a Soundfont synthesizer), stayed small (ideally one file) and didn't dependent on external code.

chirs241097/fluidsynth

About the fork

Introduction

Information on the web

Why did we do it

Design decisions

Links