Posted
I have been trying to use synfire for almost a month, and have accomplished little. The manual seems to be almost esoteric in its presentation and the videos even more so. There doesn't seems to be a "First you do this, then you do that" philosophy behind the instruction laid out for the program. Every video opens up on a different window, but there are so many windows in Synfire that knowing how to get from one to the other is like going through a maze, absolutely without a map. It would be nice if the youtube videos were numbered in the order you should watch them. If they had some vocal instruction that would not be bad either, particularly with instruction on what window we are in at any given time. You must admit that the windows look quite similar and for someone who is starting out with this program, at the speed with which you move through the video, it ends up being confusing more than instructive. I was hoping that my 600 nearly 700 dollars was going to be well spent. However I get so frustrated just trying to figure out basic things, that I feel that I am better off combining and building my own styles in Band in the Box which does something similar to Synfire but you have to play in what you want. There is no options such as drawing or transfering from Midi to patterns in BNB as there is in Synfire. In Synfire, I too am not able to upload any of my 64 bit syn. I bought new UVI sound which seem to be incredible for use with Synfire and found that they can't be loaded because UVI only has 64 bit. I can load the Garritan but only the 32 bit. Sad, because this looked so promising in the videos and I am sure that it is, but not without clear and precise instruction.
Sat, 2015-10-10 - 23:47 Permalink
Hey Robbery
yup, its a complicated beast this synfire. I too almost gave up on it, I couldnt 'get it'. The main problem I had was think of it like a DAW. Have you tried working through the videos in the tutorial section (link is at the top just below the banner)?
Synfire does to 64bit, it has a 64 bit engine, but you can only use one engine at a time.
I have to admit it does seem happier on osx rather than windows, but that is due to how windows handles some audio drivers and nothing to do with synfire.
Have another go through the tutorial videos, maybe check out some of the user videos too, they are in the wiki.
Post specific questions in the forum, we are a friendly bunch and will try our best to help you get through the initial hurdles.
Once you have a setup and workflow that works for you, when the light dawns, you will come to realise the power of synfire and speed you can come up with ideas and tunes.
Mon, 2015-10-12 - 22:03 Permalink
Hi Robbey,
Don't give up. It does take a while. I just posted my first song with it after two months of experimentation.
The song is "Sea change" on soundcloud by Zenopus. I just dragged synfire "container" midi clips into maschine with decent results. So I didn't try to make the whole song in Synfire, Just different bits and pieces, But at least all the midi
was in the right key. I definately have not tried to hook up any hardware to it yet.
good luck.