Just thought I'd post a quick update - I haven't posted my work yet because the fluidsynth API needs an addition - the problem is that there is no way to remove a soundfont object from a synth without the synth freeing its memory. An update to fluidsynth is being considered to address this, but I don't know when this will happen.

However, if someone doesn't mind patching fluidsynth, I do have an interim workaround, so if anyone wants to use it I could email the fluid~ source file and a simple patch to the fluidsynth library.

The approach I took, BTW, is simply to keep track of the filenames by which sounfonts are loaded into fluid~'s, and if they are the same string, the font is shared rather than being reloaded. This approach isn't perfect, since different filenames can refer to the same soundfont, but that's the only drawback I can see. And before you say that this will prevent reloading an updated soundfont file, consider that there is no way to unload a soundfont in fluid~ yet. So as is, you would anyway have to erase all the fluid~'s that use the font an recreate them. And once the usage count goes to zero, I erase the shared soundfont, so the sounfont will get reloaded in this case.

Larry Troxler