Sound Fonts
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MY SOUNDFONT STORY
A few years ago I purchased a new system, a Pentium III 500Mhz with 256 megabytes of memory, and SoundBlaster Live PCI 512. At first I wanted to trash the Live and install an AWE64 because I hated the sound of the wavetable synth. Then I was considering installing a daughter card. I had heard of sound fonts before, so I figured it would be worth my while to look into that before I did anything drastic. I am glad I did.
A wavetable sound card operates by accessing a file called a Sound Font Bank, which contains wave files of digital samples of instruments. The bank contains 128 individual sound fonts (waves) in a standard GM array and the usual array of drumset sounds available on MIDI channel 10. I discovered that these sound font banks are interchangeable, and easily accessable with the Sound Font Applet that installs with the SoundBlaster Live software. So I went surfing one weekend...
I found quite a few websites offering Sound Fonts, but there are relatively few offering entire banks. Some sites are selling them on CD's, but there are some free ones out there. I discovered that they range in size from 512K to over 49MB. Obviously the bigger the file size, the better the sound - in most cases. Since SoundBlaster Live uses system ram to load and access sound font banks, you have to limit yourself to what your system will handle. If you have 64MB of system ram, a 49MB sound font bank will eat it up and leave nothing to run the rest of the system. I sure am glad I opted for the 256MB memory upgrade!!!
Here is a webpage to start with. I've downloaded many of my banks from this page.
Click on "Soundfonts"
Lately The Sound Site has been down. Here's another site I recommend:
And another one:
From the home page, click "Sounds", "Soundfont Library", "Collections". There are several pages of listings, there is a page navigator at the bottom.
I downloaded a dozen banks from these sites, and spent several days "auditioning" them. This is the frustrating part. I'd fall in love with a bank that sounds great when playing the "Bassoon Concerto", only to discover that the same bank sounds lousy when playing "Blizzard". I am still searching for the perfect bank, but here's what I recommend:
Cadenza
A 49MB "Big Font" - sounds best with Classical music.
Taiji Generation
Another Big Font - sounds best with Rock music.
Reality
A good sounding bank that works well for most types of music.
I am still researching these, and will update this page when I make new discoveries.
A WORD ON INSTALLATION
Most of the big fonts are compressed using a free utility called
sfArk. You need to download this utility before downloading a sound font bank. Once
you download a bank that is sfArk compressed, start up sfArk and open the new file.
Click the green check mark to decompress the file, it will put the useable file
in the same folder. Then find the folder that contains sound fonts for the SB Live
and drop the new (decompressed) file there. A sound font bank that is ready for use
is in this format: filename.sf2. You can find your sound font folder which the
SB Live accesses by using the FIND utility in W98/W95 and typing in *.sf2. Once the
new bank is in the right folder, open the Sound Font Applet in the SB Live software
and click the tab for "Configure Bank". Highlight the current bank listed in the
box and click the "Clear" button. (This only puts the file away...) Now click the
"Load" button, and double-click the new file. A Big Font will take as long as 15 seconds
to load up. You may get an error message stating there is not enough memory in the
cache to load the bank. Click the options tab in the same applet, and using the
slide bar, adjust the cache to
about 15% more than the size of the bank you are loading, to give it some
breathing room. I set mine for 64MB, and
it works fine. Now close the applet, load up a MIDI file, and sit back and be amazed!
The difference in sound quality is astounding!
UPDATE
I have found the Cadenza bank to be the most useful and best sounding overall. I have tried everything available to date. I did find it necessary to replace about 30 patches to suit my taste. These include a Grand Piano patch to replace Cadenza's 001 Grand Piano which has a glitch in the loop, some great guitars, a new Acoustic Bass, and better synth bass.
ANOTHER UPDATE
Although lately I have taken to making custom banks for certain compositions nowadays, using them to record MP3 files, There are some new much larger GM banks that are worth spending the time downloading. If you have the memory, I recommend the 084.0mg All In One GM V1.1 Bank, or the 103.5mg Real Font V2.1 Bank.
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