ABC Player for LotRO

[DerBarde]

Well, the player's right - in a way: that chord contains 7 notes with 2 of them being the same.

So the game's music engine seems to be a bit cleverer and recognizes that there are actually only 6 notes to play instead of 7. Done a little testing and obviously the second occurence of the same note in a chord is ignored, so in this case the sustained d/2 should sound.

[Digero]

DerBarde's theory sounds right. The chord contains a duplicate note:
[a/2-d/2-d/2c/2-^F/2-D/2-G,/2-]

To be honest, it's unlikely that I'll get around to fixing this, since it's not too bad of a bug (it really seems like a bug in midi2abc instead). There are two possible workarounds: either remove the duplicate note, or turn off LOTRO-specific warnings in ABC Player.

[Fionnuala]

Ah, I see. Agreed, it's not a big deal. If I find the one where ABC player doesn't detect an error but LOTRO does I'll let you know.

[Fredelas]

I've noticed a slight inconsistency between ABC Player's parsing and LOTRO's parsing. (I have verified that the option "Ignore LOTRO-specific errors" is UNchecked.)

ABC Player will parse minor keys using the "m" abbreviation, as in "K:Cm" for C-minor, as per the ABC specifications.

However, LOTRO requires minor keys to use the "min" abbreviation, as in "K:Cmin" for C-minor.

LOTRO seems to ignore everything after the "min" part, too. For example, "K:Cmino" and "K:Cminor" and "K:Cminorsarejailbait" will all use the key of C-minor in-game.

[Digero]

I've noticed a slight inconsistency between ABC Player's parsing and LOTRO's parsing. (I have verified that the option "Ignore LOTRO-specific errors" is UNchecked.)

ABC Player will parse minor keys using the "m" abbreviation, as in "K:Cm" for C-minor, as per the ABC specifications.

However, LOTRO requires minor keys to use the "min" abbreviation, as in "K:Cmin" for C-minor.

LOTRO seems to ignore everything after the "min" part, too. For example, "K:Cmino" and "K:Cminor" and "K:Cminorsarejailbait" will all use the key of C-minor in-game.

Well like you said, ABC Player is working according to the ABC spec... if LOTRO doesn't recognize "Cm" as C minor, then that's a bug (feel free to report it to Turbine ). I guess it would be nice if ABC Player's parser worked the exact same as LOTRO's, but I don't really have time to fix every minor difference (so to speak).

[Fredelas]

Well like you said, ABC Player is working according to the ABC spec... if LOTRO doesn't recognize "Cm" as C minor, then that's a bug (feel free to report it to Turbine ). I guess it would be nice if ABC Player's parser worked the exact same as LOTRO's, but I don't really have time to fix every minor difference (so to speak).

Oh I totally understand.

I just wanted to make note of it here in case anyone is keeping track of the many little ways LOTRO tokenizes and parses things differently. That way, if they come across a tune in a minor key that sounds fine in ABC Player but sounds wrong in-game, they will know why.

[Phede]

I got a humble question:

Are the samples used in ABC player (LotroInstruments.sf2) the same as the ingame ones?

The reason why I'm asking is that I've played around with the clarinet sample a bit and come to the conclusion that it's 29 cents too high at A 440 Hz (well it's way too high in general, A 440 is just a handy reference). Some may call it close enough for jazz ... I call it an interesting microtonal experiment.

And if it's Turbine's experiment I might want to ask them politely to end it. It makes my ears bleed.

[Phede]

Never mind the post above. The answer is in this thead (duh me).

[Digero]

I got a humble question:

Are the samples used in ABC player (LotroInstruments.sf2) the same as the ingame ones?

The reason why I'm asking is that I've played around with the clarinet sample a bit and come to the conclusion that it's 29 cents too high at A 440 Hz (well it's way too high in general, A 440 is just a handy reference). Some may call it close enough for jazz ... I call it an interesting microtonal experiment.

And if it's Turbine's experiment I might want to ask them politely to end it. It makes my ears bleed.

Yeah, it's out of tune in-game as well. I had to prevent the SoundFont editor I used from "auto-tuning" the clarinet samples, so that ABC player would sound like it does in-game.

I avoid pairing the Clarinet with the Horn in harmonies, which is especially ear-bleed-inducing.

[Uthboth]

Cannot get soundbank from stream

I keep getting this error. I've tried uninstalling both Java and the player without any luck. I'm running windows 7 64-bit. Do you have any ideas what I can do to fix this problem?

I have used it in the past, I just don't recall if it was 7 or vista. Thanks for a great program and I look forward to hearing back.

[Deradan]

Any chance of adding the Pibgorn samples to the program any time in the near future...

Thanks....

[Siegfriedpf]

Was about to ask this myself!

[Linawillow]

Cannot get soundbank from stream...

...I'm running windows 7 64-bit.

I got the same error meself, also on Win7 64bit, after I upgraded Java 6 to update 30 last night. After I removed the update and reinstalled update 29, everything worked great again.

[Orlor]

Any chance of adding the Pibgorn samples to the program any time in the near future...

Thanks....

Why? The instrument is broken. Why include it?

[Kept]

Why? The instrument is broken. Why include it?

Have to agree at this point:

Broken scale progression...

Overly loud....

Iffy performance and handling of high and low range sustained notes...

Horrible note sounds currently.....

WB/Turbine needs to a lot of work on the Pibgorn yet, to even make it's use, passable ingame.

I'm not Digero (nor am I telling him what to do in this case), but if I was, I'd be hesitant to devote a lot of programming, coding and finding appropriate sound samples to emulate the Pibgorn's current (horrid) sounds (if that's even possible, without strangling a cat in real life to obtain samples..) to including the Pibgorn in his ABC Player, as it currently stands, only to have to go through the same programming exercise when (if?) WB/Turbine chooses to fix the blatant errors of this instrument, as it currently stands.

[Uthboth]

I got the same error meself, also on Win7 64bit, after I upgraded Java 6 to update 30 last night. After I removed the update and reinstalled update 29, everything worked great again.

This fixes my problem, +rep for you and thank you for the help.

[Digero]

I got the same error meself, also on Win7 64bit, after I upgraded Java 6 to update 30 last night. After I removed the update and reinstalled update 29, everything worked great again.

Thanks for tracking down the cause. It looks like Java update 30 made some changes to Gervill library that I use to load the LOTRO instrument sound data. I'll need to figure out what changed, and probably release an update to ABC Player that works with Java update 30. For now, I guess either stick with update 29 or go without ABC player .

As for the Pibgorn, I'll add it to the supported instruments when I have time. If it's not too much work, I'll probably include it in the new version that supports Java update 30. However, I don't currently have any characters that are capable of playing it in-game--my minstrel is level 60, and as far as I know there's no Mentoring the Pibgorn skill. That'll make it more difficult to verify that it sounds the same in ABC player as it does in-game.

[DerBarde]

... I don't currently have any characters that are capable of playing it in-game--my minstrel is level 60 ...

Your local bard also has a simple pibgorn available for 60 silver that only requires your minstrel to be level 20.

[Gemer]

I'm a new player here and just started playing with this ABC music system. This ABC player program so perfect; thank you, thank you, thank you, Digero^^

I love it.

[Digero]

Ok, I've released ABC Player 1.2.2, which now works with Java 6 update 30. It also has some other minor changes, but no Pibgorn support yet. Let me know if you have any problems with it - I did not do much testing on this release.

On a side note, I'd recommend that you update Java if you'd reverted to update 29 because of ABC Player. It's always good to have the latest Java update for security fixes.

Your local bard also has a simple pibgorn available for 60 silver that only requires your minstrel to be level 20.

Aha! I missed that when I saw the level 65 one. Thanks.

[Gabriel_Theodoulos]

Wonderful! An ABC Player Thread!

I love your ABC Player.

I am noticing that your player defaults to the Lute. Is there any way it can be changed to default to a bagpipe?

Thanks ahead of time!

[Gemer]

Wonderful! An ABC Player Thread!

I love your ABC Player.

I am noticing that your player defaults to the Lute. Is there any way it can be changed to default to a bagpipe?

Thanks ahead of time!

It does default to Lute, but my experience is that it will switch to whatever instrument you have listed in the title of the file. That's the second line in the info up top. So if you had a file that had a title line like...

T: I'm Bringing Sexy Back (3:24)

It would default to Lute. But you can change that by adding in the instrument name...

T: I'm Bringing Sexy Back bagpipe (3:24)

Then when you load it up it will automatically go to bagpipe for that track. Very helpful when dealing with multi track tunes. Also, I noticed you don't need to type out Theorbo for basslines, it defaults to Theorbo when you type 'bass' after the song name. I thought that was pretty slick^^ Hope that helps

[Gabriel_Theodoulos]

It does default to Lute, but my experience is that it will switch to whatever instrument you have listed in the title of the file.

Wonderful! Yes, in fact it does work!

Thank you very much.

[DennyMala]

Grettings everyone and thanks to the creator of this fine tool that let us enjoy the music we play and listen in LOTRO without having the game running.

I reinstalled it after some time and beside missing a .dll in the program folder (I copied it from the jawa folder and now I'm fine), I have a strange "bug" while playing files. The sound seems like it's continously stuttering... somewhat like a slow motion playing with micro pausing... I dunno how to better describe it. Even when I stop the playing, I still have a couple of seconds of stuttering echo before it goes into silence.

What and where should I look to get rif of this?
Maybe is't the MSVCR100.DLL file I put there that is causing the trouble? (would it be comprised in the install would probably be a good thing, I reinstalled jawa too but it's probably not registered in the registry so ABC player can't find it unless you copy it in the same folder)

Thanks.

[diamond-tinidril]

I am using my brother's computer while staying at his house, it's Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. I was getting the same error "Cannot get soundbank from stream..." but now I'm getting "MIDI OUT transmitter not available". Any idea what that means? I never had any trouble running it from my WinXP machine... slow as it is.