Synthesizer

FreePiano can only generate MIDI signals, it needs a synthesizer to render MIDI signals to audio signals.

FreePiano comes with a tiny VSTi plugin: mdaPiano.

Loading a VSTI plugin.

FreePiano searches VSTi plugins installed on your machine on the folowing locations:

1. VST plug-in path in registry and all its subfolders.
2. The folder where freepiano.exe is in and all its subfolders.

If FreePiano didn’t find you plug-in, you can load it manually via menu Instrument -> Browse, and you can also drag a dll file to freepiano’s main window.

If your have so much VST plugs that freepiano become very slow to show the instrument menu, you can hide all plugins by uncheck Config -> Options -> GUI -> Show VSTi instruments

To show the UI of current loaded VST plugin, select Instrument -> Show VST GUI.

Use a SF2 sound font

FreePiano load sf2 sound fonts through a plugin, this plugin is included in freepiano distributions. Put your sound fonts under ‘sf2’ subfolder in freepiano install directory, and then select SF2 files using instrument menu.

Select audio output device

When a VSTi plugin is loaded, sound is outputed through FreePiano. you can change output devices in config page Config -> Options -> Audio. FreePiano will try to find a best device by default.

The default buffer is 10ms, it’s the minimal delay in most cases, If your audio doesn’t sounds correct, try to increase the buffer time.

Use ASIO devices

If your sound card support ASIO, you can select ASIO outputs, if not, you can install ASIO4ALL. ASIO provides less lags.

Output through MIDI

If you have a synthsizer only supports MIDI input, or you want to use FreePiano as a controller of another application, you can use a virtual MIDI cable. Try MIDI Yoke.