reference.book Page 373 Monday, August 31, 2009 2:47 PM
4.18 SoundWorld™
4.18 SoundWorld™ For advanced users only.
If you want to find out how SoundWorld works, read on. You don’t need to understand this to use Sibelius, but you may be interested all the same.
Sound IDs, SoundWorlds and sound sets SoundWorld refers to each sound using a structured name called a sound ID, such as woodwind.flutes.flute, woodwind.flutes.piccolo.flutter-tongue or strings.violin.ensemble.pizzicato. Notice how each sound ID usually starts with an instrument family then the instrument name, sometimes followed by playing techniques specific to that instrument. A SoundWorld simply means a collection of sound IDs, organized into a tree structure. The specific SoundWorld that Sibelius uses is called the Sibelius Standard SoundWorld (or S3W for short), which is a fairly comprehensive list of sounds available on leading sound libraries and MIDI devices. As more sounds become available, new sound IDs will be added to S3W. To play a particular sound ID, Sibelius needs to know which sounds are available on its playback devices. To find out, for each device Sibelius has a sound set, an XML file that lists all the sound IDs the device can play and the MIDI messages (e.g. program changes, controller changes, even keyswitches) needed to play them. A sound set also lists various other capabilities of the device, such as how many sounds it can play simultaneously and whether there are any special channels (e.g. the percussion-only channel 10 on General MIDI devices).
Where sound IDs appear in Sibelius Sound IDs can appear in Sibelius wherever you specify sounds. For example: Each instrument has a preferred sound ID, which you can change in House Style
Edit Instruments The Mixer shows the sound ID of each staff in the score Each notehead on a percussion staff has a preferred sound ID, which you can change by editing the instrument All playing techniques and articulations for instruments are described by sound IDs, which you can change in Play Dictionary. 373
Playback
SoundWorld is a standard developed by Sibelius for naming and classifying sound timbres. This replaces the messy patchwork of patch numbers and (often cryptic) names used by MIDI keyboards, sound modules and sound libraries to specify their sounds. Instead you can choose the sounds you want using standardized, user-friendly names. Because the names are independent of a particular playback device, Sibelius can play a score which was originally created for different devices than the ones in your system. Also, if a sound is not available in the current playback configuration Sibelius can intelligently find the best alternative and use that instead. It can also play instrumental techniques (such as slurs and accents) using specialized sounds if they are available, rather than just approximating them by changing duration or volume.