Info tool for sfs files

[dmassive]

Hi!!!

Jouni, I know this thread is old, but, what happen to your amazing tool? You did a great Job. But, it could be usefull to enhanced the power of this application.

For example, your tool, didn´t open old orion files, I mean, very old, like under version 6. But! I cheat some sfs files to see what happened, and your tool opened well, It didn´t show all the info, but some info that could help to people like me to recover very old orion files.

I´m a programmer, and I want to, if it possible, to share with me or anyone, the sfs format file info, to let me do some applicactions for that? Is it possible?

Or if that info is "top secret" make a little addon to your applicacion. One MUST HAVE is to give the chance to open old files.

Sorry for my english XD

And thanks!!!

[Saukar23]

I would like that too! I had a computer crash a year ago & there's like 100 songs of mine that I can't open at all... but the other 400 were backed up & I was able to redo them

[epilogue]

I stopped in to say "Leatherman". It's been around a while, although I unfortunately can't recall the creator (it was here on these forums though - it gave the info you're looking for).

[epilogue]

Here's the Leatherman thread:

http://forum.synapse-audio.com/viewtopic.php?id=2471

[Mark]

That was by Jouni (Mark Vera is a pseudonym of his).

[Solid Technica]

Hey, sorry to bump an old thread, but is this still available. I need a tool to quickly browse which vsti's were used in a song without opening them one by one..

[Jouni]

Hello.. sorry about bumping. I will try to search the sources for the tool (unfortunately they are in old HDDs and I don't have way to plug them into my mac right now) and I have to recreate one for macOS. Maybe I just create simplified version of the info tool with some data extraction functionalities. I finally have situation I can pickup my music at some point and I have been thinking about the old songs how I can convert those to Logic Pro, or extract some parts of those for remixing. Uncertain yet how.

The file format is fairly simple, of course the storage format for specific parts differ. The Leatherman tool or Analyzer, I cannot remember now how those were different (edit: I found the runnable versions of the tools and they seemed to work at least through macOS Parallels; Leatherman was just Ultron file editor).

I recall also making tool to repair broken sfs files by detecting broken parts and re-saving it in way that Orion can somewhat open them on parts still fine. I don't recall if I published it or was it just one time hit to recover one of my important songs.. I had the pleasure to work with Richard at that time, so I had access to the Orion sources to help me with development of the tools and sometimes fix the issue in the Orion itself. Tools were created with Delphi (Objective Pascal). Now days I work in a software company and have created online games, mobile apps for business, among others.

Great to see this community is still alive. Warm thoughts to Richard too! I was hoping to get permission to extract that wonderful Platinum Chorus as external effect for mac DAWs as well

[Christophe]

9 years !
Welcome back Jouni

[Jouni]

Yes back(ish). Still the studio is being setup.. did some overdue maintenance for the hardware synths and some new purchases to get the RME PCIe soundcard working with my mac and get all hooked up.

I was able to get my old hard disks running and old DVD backups checked, I found the sources for the tools. I probably just try to see if I can make a new tool to "explode" old Orion sfs files into more reusable formats - like extract track data as midi and possibly audio samples out (if embedded) without running Orion.

If it's okay for Richard, I can make it open source project in Github (without Orion sources, beside conversion of the needed parts of c-headers to be able to read the files) after it's work at least in some form so others can contribute. Though not having the Orion sources makes it a bit harder to contribute. I think I only got references up the 7.6 version or so. I'm not familiar what were the changes to the later versions of Orion.

[Richard]

Sure go ahead

[Jouni]

Thanks, I think I forgot to reply here.

I've been working on/off the tool, taking a bit longer as I decided to learn some Rust programming language to improve myself professionally as well..

It will be just a command line tool. First version with just macOS build, but I'll see also Windows build as it should be fine after setting up the environment for that (and one can do it on your own too after I put the code for download).

Primary reason is for myself to do couple of things:

* Display data from song:
- used instruments and data which is available (current settings)
- mixer settings, ie. eq settings for converting manually into another DAW
- VST information, possibly export current patch as fxp/fxb (in macOS env not so useful unless using same VST/AU)
- generate html presentation from playlist for display

* Conversion/export from song:
- tracks and/or patterns as midi data, type 0 and type 1 for full song, including automation (possibly with CC# remapping for better import)
- drumrack midi conversion and sample export
- audio tracks export (possibly as AAF)

Basically it could other things too (like be sfs repair tool), however as Orion is discontinued need to be reasonable what's really needed.

ps. kudos to Richard for the OBSSESSION. I was thinking about getting the Arturia's, but found out you're been working with one emulation too... Juno-106 next? (chorus works great in Orion already, hehe). The Roland's cloud version is pretty close, but I think Richard would nail it too.

[Kriminal]

It will be just a command line tool. First version with just macOS build

a mac tool for a win only app?

[Jouni]

Irony isn't it Transition tool mostly, but as I said, should be nothing preventing making it Windows build as well, probably very simple thing to do, but not priority right now. Mac makes more sense for me to start with.

[Jouni]

Working on this few hours per day, its a bit more work than expected. While doing I noticed the reason why the old SFS Analyzer only works with +6.5 files. Reason is that I cut some corners and added feature back then to the Orion file format which allowed easier format scanning by just skipping a lot data. Now doing it properly so it should work more or less same as Orion at least up to version 7.6 (I don’t have more recent as reference and for now it’s fine for my own use).

Current version loads song data with samplers and vst synth data with patterns. Adding them now one by one by going the loader code through. Hoping to release some basic version soon, I already setup page to Gitlab so hopefully I can also use it to build releases Windows and Mac.

After that’s done it needs some code to output relevant info in a bit nicer format..

[Jouni]

I got now somewhat working app, still need to test with more songs and have Richard give thumb up at it before release. Also will have the Windows build. Seems a bit harder to have automatically to do that.

Output is a bit technical, and incomplete even though all data is read in. Essentials are be there, but first version has no other functionality than that. If there’s enough momentum, might add something what’s useful..