Darkshade Forum

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: diddly on November 10, 2018, 10:46:35 PM

Title: How to play General Midi with a Soundfont in Reaper on a mac
Post by: diddly on November 10, 2018, 10:46:35 PM

Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm/) is fantastic music software.  I'm amazed it is such a low price.  One thing that I found annoying though is just playing general midi.  There's lots of ways it can be done, but I don't want to fiddle with finding the perfect instrument samples for each channel for whatever VST has the best sound.

So here (for my own benefit as much as anyone elses) are the steps for quickly setting up Reaper to play a midi using your favourite soundfont (assuming it contains all the general midi instruments)

• Get your desired soundfont(s) in .sf2 format.  There's a decent free one here: http://falcosoft.hu/reality_gmgs_falcomod.zip (http://falcosoft.hu/reality_gmgs_falcomod.zip)
• Put them in the /Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks/ folder on your mac
• Open Reaper (or start a new project)
• Select Insert -> Virtual Instrument on a New Track
• Look for AUi: DLSMusicDevice (Apple) and select that one
• You should see your soundfonts as options in the Sound Bank dropdown.  Pick one
• Close the FX window and turn this track into a folder (tiny icon, bottom right of track control
• Select Insert -> Media File
• Pick your desired midi file
• Rewind to start, and hit Play!