Category: Geeks r Us
Hi.
I've been playing with soundfonts for a few months now and i'm interested in expanding my collection.
Is there any libaries of soundfonts that i can get?
I'm not looking for big .sf2 files, more like a big zip file with lodes of them in.
Any ideas? Thanks, BEN.
well, that depends a lot. you can get soundfonts mostly through different ftp servers, websites, file sharing, torrents and the like. The disadvantage of the zip files is that these sound fonts use rom-bassed samples. This means that the soundfonts map to a specific sample and sound in your sound card and thus most programs for midi converssion to audio are rendered useless. Many sound fonts are big fs2 files because each sample is mostly a wave file that is used during converssions. Either that or you need a soundBlaster card or any other card with asuond font embedded into it. If you are dreading big file sizes you can get the compresses SF Arc files but then decompressing them is not any advantage. It saves bandwith if you think about it though. You must have big storage for audio related operations. Sorry, but thats the way the cookie crumbles!
What is a soundfont. Sorry for the dumb question but I'm a dumb person. =)
a soundfont is a packaged set of samples that are organized in a logical midi gm structure. You can render midi files to audio this way and there are a lot of advantages to it too. Sound fonts are just that, fonts. Like character fonts that contain different symbols when a keyboard sends an electronic message to the processor, sound fonts are samples that act are placed on a file or player through a soundcard whena midi file sends a message to the computer's processor too.
Procure a quality DAW and you'll never again be forced to worry over the size of your fonts. As a rule of thumb, the larger fonts are superior in that they have velocity layers that anticipate any amount of playing force. Moreover, the audio samples used are actually 44.1K renditions.
As for where to get soundfonts? Buy them, download them, or if you're one who likes challenge and experimentation, build your own with something like AWave studio or Alive.
lol, "Procure a quality DAW and you'll never again be forced to worry over the size of your fonts." True, but aren't these also big on size? Besides, many DAW's have their own soundfonts or synths anyawy. On another note, not all of these DAWs are accessible or to a point fully workable. Reason might provide excellent (700 mb each) sound banks and the like, but its working is far limited due to how intuitive its interface is graphically. Moreover, now that we have physical modelling laying around somewhere, the 1 gb soundfonts which contain the different layers of velocity are pretty much obsolete. In fact, sound fonts are not expensive anymore since this kind of technology is not the latest. Still, it is convenient for some of us. I've tried awave studio before and it gets interesting. I guess the nicest renderer out there for now is softsynth... but i might be wrong. I use audio compositor, although that software has been discontinued.
For my purposes, a DAW is not one of the myriad portostudios being marketed. A DAW (digital audio workstation) is, quite simply, a computer purchased for the sole purpose of audio production. Therefore a DAW is fully accessible with the appropriate screen access package.
On the subject of rendering/playing/etc: AWave is nice because it's quick in batches and can convert just about anything into just about anything else. I cannot speak for its rendering abilities as I've never used it with any MIDI devices. To date, I would have to give the nod to VSampler in terms of the best soundfont player available and still in production.