I didn't realize that SFZ would allow for many outputs.
Not SFZ, Linuxsampler allows. But I think it's possible to use any SFZ sampler plugin for that (just load multiple instances)
Possibly also because documentation for SFZ and SF2 was sketchy at the time I was looking for it
I started using LS with SFZs (after a ~year of using it with GIG) in 2012-2013 or something, I can't say the documentation/examples were great, but good enough for me.
and I may have conflated the two formats.
They are completely different beasts
As for making a kit for LinuxSampler with multiple outputs, it did not look simple.
You insert a plugin in your DAW
run an external UI(I prefer QSampler these days)
add a channel, set an SFZ, route channel outputs to the plugin outputs
repeat for all the SFZs.
Your DAW (I tested it with Ardour only, though) will remember all LS settings after saving a project, so there's no need to run the separate LS UI anymore.
I don't know what I must have missed
More flexible MIDI dispatch, scripting, simpler file formats (manual XML editing is a pain). And not least, you could have round robins and all that stuff for many years already.
I still don't like the idea of loading anything outside the DAW though; I prefer it and all its routing contained within the DAW.
It's inside your DAW, the only thing you run outside is the control interface, which usually is a separate window anyway, so the only difference is what you click to show it.
So if the VST version is completely contained within the DAW, and making a kit with round robin / multi-velocity layers / directed choke functionality / multiple outputs is possible, I'd consider it.
It looks like it works.
I've just created a new session in Ardour, added a MIDI track with Linuxsampler VST plugin, ran QSampler, loaded a saved LSCP script, saved the session, closed Ardour and QSampler, then ran Ardour again and LS settings were the same.
As it is: I watched a couple videos for how to set up LinuxSampler for something similar to the DrumGizmo kit I'm using, and it seems I'm not going to want to do that.
I don't know what are the videos you are talking about, but for me, it's as easy to set up as DrumGizmo, maybe even easier, since its toolkit doesn't work well with tiling WMs and HiDPI screens.
Just how old a computer are you running? When I use DrumGizmo with that kit, it takes a maximum 3% of my CPU of my older computer which is just an i3 6300. On my newer Ryzen it's a fraction of that.
It's Pentium G2030 from 2013.
Anyway DrumGizmo is evolving to be something more specific for drums.
Any examples which are not possible to do in LS?
I wouldn't begrudge the devs for wanting to create something new, either. There are reasons for it that I can imagine.
Especially when you are not aware of already existing solutions :]. I think life is too short to rewrite all from scratch.
2014_01_03:117:[20:15:10] <deva> I'm not too familiar with linuxsampler
The thing is I was very empowered when DrumGizmo project had started, I thought that finally, we would get a PnP drum sampler for Linux with ready to use natural-sounding kits, so I don't have to edit SFZs manually, but since 2014 I started to become less enthusiastic, it lacked a lot of must-have (TMO) features - RT resampling, disc streaming, round robins, you name it. Instead of SFZs you had to edit XMLs and the interface was buggy. I kept watching on news, sometimes ran a new version, but they still weren't as functional as LS was.
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame devs at all, I think they are really nice guys, good devs and drummers! Maybe DrumGizmo just wasn't for me, I wanted to have a working solution, they (possibly) wanted to have fun writing something new. It's ok. But I'm disappointed a little bit (and It's mostly my personal fault), and really don't see what it can give to me.