A Soundbank contains a set of Instruments
that can be loaded into a Synthesizer.
Note that a Java Sound Soundbank is different from a MIDI bank.
MIDI permits up to 16383 banks, each containing up to 128 instruments
(also sometimes called programs, patches, or timbres).
However, a Soundbank can contain 16383 times 128 instruments,
because the instruments within a Soundbank are indexed by both
a MIDI program number and a MIDI bank number (via a Patch
object). Thus, a Soundbank can be thought of as a collection
of MIDI banks.
Soundbank includes methods that return String
objects containing the sound bank's name, manufacturer, version number, and
description. The precise content and format of these strings is left
to the implementor.
Different synthesizers use a variety of synthesis techniques. A common
one is wavetable synthesis, in which a segment of recorded sound is
played back, often with looping and pitch change. The Downloadable Sound
(DLS) format uses segments of recorded sound, as does the Headspace Engine.
Soundbanks and Instruments that are based on
wavetable synthesis (or other uses of stored sound recordings) should
typically implement the getResources()
method to provide access to these recorded segments. This is optional,
however; the method can return an zero-length array if the synthesis technique
doesn't use sampled sound (FM synthesis and physical modeling are examples
of such techniques), or if it does but the implementor chooses not to make the
samples accessible. |
