Soundfonts

[rosetchfie]

HI
I have been playing around in last few days with using some midi to MP3 converters that use soundfonts and also downloading sound fonts that are somehow supposed to work in conjunction with your sound card or even without it for normal midi playback etc.
In the first case the MP3s converted from midi sounded quite diffrent from my usual Roland GS wavetable sounds - probably better drums and bass ( but much louder and more reverb) but some of the other instruments sounded poor - apart from voice oohs and aahs which sounded pretty good.
In the case of just downloading soundfonts to ädd to the available sounds for midi playback nothing seemed to happen.
So a couple of questions I guess for anyone who understands how they are supposed to work
Q1 - can you add additional soundfonts into these converter programs to improve the selection of sounds - or is it a case of going back and editing the midi file volumes and insruments until you get something that sounds right?
Q2 - for normal midi playback how do downloads of soundfonts get activated and how does the program know to stop using the sound card or wavetable or whatever and use the new fonts?
Can't quite get my head around it at the moment
regards
Roy Setchfield
Waiuku, NZ
Q2

[rosetchfie]

HI all
For the benefit of others I can now answer my own first question after playing around a bit
answer is yes you can use different sound font collections and change what banks the program ( such as Midi converter ) uses
I have used three different ones so far with quite different results - but all of them have much better live sound and feel than the conventional XP Roland GS wavetable sound - good as that is
Only problem is that some soundfonts result in much louder drums ( and sometimes bass ) so need to reset midi track volumes - choir and other voices are however much better and guitars/brass and strings vary a lot
hope that helps someone - I am still working on Q2
cheers
Roy Setchfield
Waiuku. NZ

[FoothillsSound]

Roy,

To the best of my knowledge, there is not a MIDI control msg. to tell your system to load a different SF bank.

A possible workaround might be to have more than one instance of your SF player open with the alternate banks loaded in each. By assigning a different channel # to each you could call up the ones you want when needed.

Cheers,

[ironbaden]

i've been using this neet free program called SYNTHFONT which wiil allow u to load in midi files and drop in sound fonts and VST synths.... This free software will record these as wavesand seperate the files into seperate tracks to load into ur recording software ...that is how i got the great drum and bass sounds on my Sign of The Gypsy queen on the members stage

As for sound cards.... u need to have a sound card that will run soundfonts if u don't use a program like Synthfont. cards like sound blaster will do the trick nicely.... i was luck enuff to get a sound card for christmas last year... but... SYNTHFONT works wonders.. and its free... there are many free soundfonts to download from the internet and they are license free so no copyright issues...

[oldsage]

when you open the soundfont banks up,you will find that you have more that just 1 slot ie:bank1,bank2 and so on.if you want load a complete bank in1,another in2 and mix and match in 3.by mix and match,i mean open up the bank look at the instruments and their numbers,click on the one you want to change,and select the replace button,browse to a separate bank choose the appropiate instrument and click on it.this should then be your default sound.you could go through the whole soundbank doing this,and then save complete using a different name!

[rosetchfie]

Thanks guys
that all helps - seems more fascinating the more I find out about it
cheers
Roy NZ

[rosetchfie]

Hi Oldsage
What you describe above is exactly what I want to do - but what do you mean by "when you open the soundfont banks up - is that via another host application or can you open the sf2 files themselves?

regards
Roy
NZ

[oldsage]

i have soundblaster x-fi extreme sound card,i think the other models also support soundfonts,you will need to find in the soundcard program(or it maybe on the dedicated player) the soundfont manager.open it and it should show you what is loaded,click on the bank and list of instruments.on the left when you click on one of the sounds it will also show here,then there should be some other buttons like replace or load.if you have another soundbank with the sounds you want click on replace and direct to the sound you want.when you have done click at the top to save as. cheers steve

[rick]

Hi there!

now i have read thru this thread, but i don't read how good these soundfonts are. is there a soundfont that sounds as good for example a roland sc88? what format are they? ****.sf2? where can i get a good sf2?

cheers Rick

[oldsage]

i think i posted a link to a good site in one of the former posts,i will try and find it for you.the one that i use is the virtual sound canvas1.0 which is very close to the vsc3 it has all the gm2 sounds too.but i think in order to get it to sound the same,the chorus needs raising for the whole bank.it would give it a richer sound.
aah found it. here,s the link.you will have to join,in order to download,but it is free! click on the search button at the bottom left and select the sf2 section,it will show piano,change it to collections,and take your pick from about 100 different banks.cheers steve
www.sf2midi.com

[rosetchfie]

Hi Oldsage
I have now found that I can access the soundfonts on my Audigy 2 soundcard via a program called Vienna and another one called Synth Font - Vienna is recommended by Creative
I have downloaded them both and can see I have a bit of homework to do now figuring out how to use them - however on the face of it seems to work OK
cheers
Roy NZ

[rick]

Thanks Steve!!!! I joined and downloaded a couple of them sf2's, but it just don't sound the same as a Roland. I have a Miditemp M2 midifile player with a Roland SCB-15 daughterboard in it and i have been trying to find a sf2 sound font to match this daughterboard, but with no luck! :-( Oh well, i now have another SCB-15 attached on a pci-sound card in my computer and it works great. When I change something in a midi file on the computer it sounds just the same in my Miditemp!

Thanks again!

Rick

[oldsage]

did you download the sound canvas 1 soundfont? when you use it open up vienna and put a global chorus of 45 in the space,and also the same for reverb.i used to find i always had to increase the levels otherwise it would sound flat.i think there is a program called soundfont manager,which will let you use multiple soundfont banks.i have tried quite a few banks,but i have yet to find better than vsc3.i use cakewalk music creator4 ,and i select the vsc as the main output,also use it in the multimedia panel as default player for midi files.when you use the program just select the vsc3 and use roland standard sounds.

[rosetchfie]

Hi all
I was looking for a soundfont SGM180 which a lot of reviews said was the best they had found but found a new one SGM V2 - beta on the same site which is the best yet that I have found - couldn't get SGM 180 on the same site to download so if anyone has got the SGM180 I would like to compare it
Just forget the site at the momenmt but it is a related site to sf2midi.com - a google search should find it
cheers
Roy NZ

[FoothillsSound]

I don't know if any of you have tried the Fluid soundfont, but I like and use it quite a bit.

A link to download it from Thomas Hammer's site is here.

[rosetchfie]

Hi Alan
Yes I have tried Fluid and was listening to some tracks I recorded with it this morning as I drove to work as a matter of fact - it is quite good but like a lot of the others some instruments sound good while others sound a bit weird. That is one of the reasons I like the SGM V2 - everything seems to come out OK and realistic
cheers
Roy NZ