Sforzando not working, driving me insane. Requesting Help...

[u/momosandsunsets]

Yeah so I'm trying to use Unreal Instrument's guitar SFZs real bad and for some reason Sforzando only plays some slide samples on Metal GTX, and some fret hits and a few other things on Standard Guitar as opposed to you know, strings and notes and stuff. Reinstalled Sforzando a couple of times, reinstalled the SFZs, messed with all the settings on Sforzando, tried opening the program on it's own instead of inside of a DAW, nothing changed. Any help is appreciated, I'm a complete and total beginner when it comes to production, I don't have a midi controller or fancy software, I'm using FL studio free trial and LMMS with keyboard and mouse. I was gonna post videos showing it but apparently I can't, sorry. Basically the only keys that do anything are C2 through A2 and they only play muted notes and slide samples, everything else does nothing no matter the setting, what sfz is loaded or the switches.

[u/August_T_Marble]

Two guesses.

Make sure you are selecting the correct samples in the UI. Sometimes libraries come with different options like slides, scrapes, pinch harmonics, muted, etc. 

Other times, it can be because certain midi notes will toggle a certain mode so if you are playing a certain pre-recorded midi track, a note in there will always toggle it to a mode you aren't expecting every time you play it, and it will happen on that track even if you reinstall everything until you find and remove the offending midi note.

EDIT: I have somewhere to be in about an hour, but when I get back home I will find the setting you're looking for.

[u/August_T_Marble → u/August_T_Marble]

So when you load up sforzando, the UI will have some options. 

In the "Instrument" dropdown. What do you have selected? Is it the full Metal GTX library?

In the "K-switch" dropdown, what do you have selected? To start, try Sus_PBR24.

Now, using only your mouse and the on-screen piano, press on the keys that are not greyed out. Do they sound like a pitch?

In the SZ parsing details showing in the center of the UI, what does it show for region? It should be a path to a specific sample file. The path is named in a way that you can get some idea of what kind of sample it is playing.

In our case, it should be currently something in the "sus_" folder, right? It sounds like a pitch but maybe a bit boring if you don't have a distortion effect on it.

If you click on a greyed out key, though, it'll change the K-switch value into something else. C1, for example, changes it to Brush_Up which doesn't sound like a pitch you're expecting. 

Let me know if that helped at all.

[u/momosandsunsets → u/August_T_Marble]

Hi sorry for the late reply I've been out all day. Yeah the instrument loaded is the full metal gtx sfz file, the k-switch is on default sus down, and none of the keys but D1 do anything, and all d! does is play a random slide noise, it says so in the region thing. All the other keys do nothing and the region just stays blank/doesn't update (as in like, if I press d1 and a slide plays, that just stays there, no matter the key I press since no other samples are playing).

I tried all the K-siwtches, and the problem persists, no key does anything at all. I'm really so baffled by this that I think I might give up and look up a guitar soundfont somewhere. Thanks for taking the time to try to help though.

[u/August_T_Marble → u/momosandsunsets]

That sucks. Something is definitely wrong there, then. Sorry.

[u/Right-Growth-1011]

i have the same problem. any luck?

[u/momosandsunsets → u/Right-Growth-1011]

Looked for different sfz files online, gave up on the Unreal Instruments ones

[u/SRVT526 → u/momosandsunsets]

What files did you use?

[u/momosandsunsets → u/SRVT526]

Found a list on google, here it is https://sfzinstruments.github.io/guitars/

[u/Right-Growth-1011 → u/momosandsunsets]

hey, i just wanted to say that i found the reason we're struggling:
https://www.plogue.com/plgfrms/viewtopic.php?t=9916

and if you try to download any older version of sforzando you will likely encounter ARIA engine issues. So you have to download older versions of ARIA player too...
I got it working after 3 hours. Not really worth it as I had to avoid many malware websites to find all these proper versions...

[u/SRVT526]

Having the same problem with same SFZ files. This is driving me insane I literally just moved pcs and it stopped working

[u/Right-Growth-1011 → u/SRVT526]

hey, i just wanted to say that i found the reason we're struggling:
https://www.plogue.com/plgfrms/viewtopic.php?t=9916

and if you try to download any older version of sforzando you will likely encounter ARIA engine issues. So you have to download older versions of ARIA player too...
I got it working after 3 hours. Not really worth it as I had to avoid many malware websites to find all these proper versions...

[u/AdromoSyle]

Apparently it's something to do with the current version of Sforzando, but I've just downloaded a version from 2018 and it's still broken. So I think it might be something to do with the pathing for the Samples. But it's specific folders only for some reason, as the Simple Arpeggio and Guitar Chord Central sfz files work fine.

[u/Apprehensive_Fix_451]

I had a similar problem. Months ago after reinstalling some VSTs the Metal GTX just stopped making any kind of sound.

Today i finally managed to fix it! I uninstalled everything related to sforzando, installed the latest version (1.981) to get the ARIA Engine and then installed the 1.822 version on top of it.

Hope this helps!