Sounds
Ferrous Lineup can play its instruments in two ways:
- with its own synthesizer, the Lineup Osc, which builds every sound from a few simple waves. It needs nothing else, and it is what plays until you choose otherwise;
- with a SoundFont, a file of recordings of real instruments: a piano, a double bass, a bandoneón, a choir, a drum kit. This is how the band should sound.
When the app opens
The first time you open Ferrous Lineup, before anything plays, a window called Real instrument sounds offers to download GeneralUser GS, a free SoundFont by S. Christian Collins, of about 30 MB, and asks “Play the instruments with it?”. If the app first offers to bring back unsaved work, the sounds come right after.
- Download fetches it once and keeps it on your computer. A bar shows how far it is, and Stop gives up. When it is done, the status bar says “Instruments play from GeneralUser GS”, and every instrument plays its recording from then on, next time too.
- Choose a file… uses another SoundFont you already have, any
.sf2file made for General MIDI. - Not now, or closing the window, keeps the Lineup Osc. The app does not ask again; the setting below is there when you change your mind.
If GeneralUser GS is already on your computer, downloaded by an earlier version for instance, the window says so and offers Use it instead of Download: a moment later the instruments play from it. Until you answer, it asks again each time the app opens, and when you press Play or open a demo. Your answer and the sound settings below stay when you update Ferrous Lineup.
If the download fails (no network, a firewall), the window says why.
You can download GeneralUser-GS.sf2 from its
page with a browser and
pick it with Choose a file….
The sound settings
Edit > Settings…, under Audio, holds the same choices:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| SoundFont instruments | Channels with an instrument play the SoundFont’s recording of it. Untick it to go back to the Lineup Osc. |
| SoundFont drums | The drum kit plays the SoundFont’s drums too: a recorded kick, snare and hi-hat. |
| Choose SoundFont… | Plays another .sf2 file instead. |
| Use GeneralUser GS | Goes back to GeneralUser GS after you chose another file. |
The Audio page also says which output the sound goes to, and has Restart audio for when the sound card stops (see Troubleshooting).
WAV and video exports, the computer keyboard and a MIDI keyboard all play the SoundFont too.
An instrument for each channel
Every channel that plays notes has an instrument, one of the 128 of General MIDI, the standard list of instruments that every synthesizer and SoundFont numbers the same way, from the grand piano to the gunshot. The band’s players, the Library’s piano and bass, and every voice of every demo come with the right one.
To change a channel’s instrument:
- in the channel rack, right-click the channel’s name and open Instrument, or
- in the mixer, click the instrument’s name on the channel’s line.
The instruments are grouped as General MIDI groups them: pianos, organs, guitars, basses, strings, brass, reeds and so on. None (the Lineup Osc’s own sound) gives the channel back to the Lineup Osc, whatever the SoundFont setting says.
The same menu can also send the channel to an external synthesizer over MIDI: see MIDI keyboards and synths.
Your own sounds
The channel rack also plays sounds of your own. Drag a WAV file from your file manager onto a channel of the rack, and that channel plays it on each step you light, as a drum machine plays its samples. See The channel rack.