Hi,

Everyone keeps going on about Sound Fonts. I don't really know exactly how they differ from other sample sets but i feel i should be using them.

Can someone give me a brief description of Sound Fonts and point me towards the best free Sound Font player and free Sound Font resources.

Cheers,

Al

And the infinite free soundfont list...
http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28724

In summary a soundfont is:

• a collection of samples
  
• layer information
  
• articulation information

all stored in a single file.

The samples are triggered by MIDI events reaching the sample player. Depending on things such as note number and velocity, a particular sample is selected. That's what the layer information does. The articulation information then directs the sample player how to play the sample - looping, envelopes, filtering and so on.

You can store multiple instruments in the same file, using MIDI Bank and Program Changes to select them. Commonly you'll get a collection that follow the General MIDI assignment of instruments to Programs.

The single file format makes it hard to swap out the samples or re-use them with different layer or articulation information. Hence alternatives such as sfz format.

alriley wrote:

Can someone give me a brief description of Sound Fonts and point me towards the best free Sound Font player and free Sound Font resources.

SoundFonts seem to be enjoying a bit of a revival. I got my basic info from http://www.soundfont.com/tutorials.html and had a look at the stuff by Rich the Tweakmeister at http://www.tweakheadz.com/SoundFont_Secrets.html.

And, as pointed out, the best free VST SoundFont player is indeed rgcAudio's sfz.

Quote:

In summary a soundfont is: a collection of samples layer information articulation information

Is ok, but you are forgeting something: Soundfonts have also filter information, by example "Cutoff" one. This filters works with the original hardware samplers (emu and sblaster cards) but i believe that most of the sofsynths that plays soundfonts dont read the filter info. That makes that when you plays some soundfont in a Soundblaster card sounds diffrent than a sofsynth.

An example of a soundfont that use filter cutoff for the piano and mezzopiano layers is the "Bobvjerg Steinway piano".

Edit: sorry, i read better your post and found you include the filtering option under "articulation". Anyway, i believe that is a valid tip.

The most important info about SoundFonts:

There are lots of good free ones. That's why they're popular, of course! If there were free Giga players and free Gigas of manageable size floating around all over the place, SF2 would probably be just about directly out the window.

marce wrote:

but you are forgeting something: Soundfonts have also filter information, by example "Cutoff" one.

Yes -- that's included in what I said by "articulation information" -- how to play the sample. But you're right - there's a hell of a lot more to the format if you dig deeper. You can modulate the modulation, from what I understand (e.g. CC controlling LFO depth). It's technically not bad.

I just don't like the monolithic format (any more). If René (or someone) would only bring DFD to sfz format...