Musyng Kite 990MB GM/GS soundfont. Former Evanessence overhaul! 2011-2014 June 21st 2014

[Sarcyan]

im just curious, does anybody have serious clipping going on with the samples? for example, if you chose the electro kit, then play notes a low octaves, the sound 'pops' and the mixer goes to red. im using these in presonus studio one free in presense.

Well, I don't have that program sadly but I tested all the drum kits and while there are some differences in the output volume -the pop kit sounds slightly weaker than others-, the Electro Kit sounds fine utilizing quite a few programs and under different circumstances.

I can tell you that the output volume was tweaked to be compatible with most speakers out there, so I ran the risk of fading the sound too much, but that was the price to pay in order for the soundfont to sound fine under almost every circumstance, avoiding distortion, especially when using those crappy laptop speaker, the little buggers are so bad in general. I also edited most of the instruments of the soundfont on a laptop.

Apart from that, the idea is that the balance between instruments shouldn't very noticeably off. Listening to midi files where certain instruments intended to be playing the melody are quiet & hidden behind the harmony can be irritating.

....and FINALLY!

Apologies for delays...PC screen dead and painting of hall, stairs and landing completed (looks nice if anyone is interested!).

Thanks for the presidential nomination, but as I didn't keep my promise to do this a week and a half ago, surely that rules me out??? I vote for Sarcyan anyway!

Links for the latest soundfont converted to SFZ are attached. I've pulled these into Alchemy Player, Zampler and Dimension LE to test. Testing hasn't been extensive, so please feed back any issues. Download is big!

Part 1 http://www.mediafire.com/?vq1up7ibys7syu3
Part 2 http://www.mediafire.com/?jde2h2uul5661pk
Part 3 http://www.mediafire.com/?j83a6dup54wp2iw
Part 4 http://www.mediafire.com/?iodsu1v4mu4qylt
Part 5 http://www.mediafire.com/?1hx49nw7zrfm9a0
Part 6 http://www.mediafire.com/?3x640ak5p9stqpi
Part 7 http://www.mediafire.com/?6bnayb1wzxu4i18
Part 8 http://www.mediafire.com/?m7a4yokg85ivc44
Part 9 http://www.mediafire.com/?33mfb1ff68fyeam

Zipped with 7 zip, so suggest unzipping with same. Enjoy!

These links have expired. Are they available elsewhere?

I am afraid they aren't, afaik. I have the files on my HD, just uncompressed. I could try to compress them and upload them, but I can't promise anything, tbh. My connection is not the fastest ever and compressing SFZ files isn't like compressing a soundfont.

Aside from that, I'm awful busy, so I might not get back right away, but any question I'll answer it eventually.

See yah'

[oxxyyd]

Never mind. I found a free program that converts a soundfont from sf2 to sfz. Unfortunately only one instrument at a time, but then I found a another program written in some obscure language I think I might test.
Anyway, I inspected one of the instruments (a drum kit) I managed to extract with the free prog, but it seemed it wasn't layered so I think I'll continue to search for a good soundfont to use.

[Kautscho]

Hi and thank you so much for offering this amazing Soundfont!!! Unfortunately, the download doesn't seem to work for me. I followed your instructions but after clicking "Download anyway" nothing happens anymore.

Would you have any idea, what else I could try to get this file?

THANK YOU!!
Kautscho

[bob bobwood]

The link first link on page 1 of this thread works for me on Win7.

[bob bobwood]

Right, I see it doesn't work in XP with IE8.

You could try using this free download manager;
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

might work

[Kautscho]

Right, I see it doesn't work in XP with IE8.

I'm using Windows 7 myself BUT you gave me an idea: I used Firefox when I first tried to download it, just tried it with IE and IT WORKS !!!

THANKS a lot !!!!

[bob bobwood]

Reverse logic eh ? I was going to suggest something that Teksonik told me to try but I just coudn't think of the name or find the thread. It could have been Firefox. I only installed it to get a stubborn d/l and then unistalled it again.

Anyway, enjoy.

[Dewdman42]

Anyone know if this soundfont is to be found anywhere as of now? I have tried all the various links on this thread, and some seem to work

[bob bobwood]

Click on the actual youtube link in the first post. It has some news about updates.

[Dewdman42]

yes, The medifire links there are broken and the one to google docs says I am not authorized.

[bob bobwood]

yes, The medifire links there are broken and the one to google docs says I am not authorized.

Indeed, but it does have some news about an update.

[Sarcyan]

yes, The medifire links there are broken and the one to google docs says I am not authorized.

Well, the final version of the soundfont has been released, it is now called Evanessence.

And it's the last update ever.

I added many professional sounds -Electric Clean Guitar, Distortion Guitar, and so many many others, new professional drum kits, the Standard Drum kit is now better than ever-, and around 2000 new samples -7707 samples in total now- since I released the last public version.

The soundfont is COMPLETELY different than it was, even the last version published here, and it's like 10 times better now.

Lots of things have changed to list them in this very moment, and I've made many important optimizations.

I will start promoting it soon, but I don't have much time now. For now, here are the download links, I uploaded it today:

http://sdrv.ms/WDSv0R (link to download it from my Skydrive account. Skydrive is free now, you don't need to use a Hotmail or Live account to download files from there now)

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6caGN_ ... sp=sharing (google drive DL link)

Enjoy.

-Cose

[bob bobwood]

Thank you Sarcyan, for the time and effort that you've put into this, much appreciated. I'll try it later.

unable to d/l with IE8 XP but fine with IE9 Win7 (597MB download -12min 40secs)

[Dewdman42]

Thank you Sarcyan, for the time and effort that you've put into this, much appreciated.

+100 Thank you thank you

[Sarcyan]

Thanks to you for the kind comments.

Here is a copy of the README file regarding the released version.

Introduction

First of all, I would like express my deepest thanks to Kenneth ( Synthfont www.synfhtont.com and Viena creator and developer ) for his feedback and help with the last version of the soundfont. His help was really valuable and also indirectly spurred my interest to continue with the project. Without him the current version of the soundfont wouldn't be where it is now as I certainly had grown tired of the soundfont back in November, and further fixing and tweaking wasn't being considered until he shared some feedback with me to improve a couple of instruments, which I certainly did, again, with his help.

When that happened I began to regain interest in the project until it reached its maturity, as it is now. Further development of the soundfont won't happen, but you can edit and modify it freely to suit to your own tastes, add instruments and presets, etc.

Also thanks for downloading and trying this sounfont. Evanessence -the name comes from the band of the almost the same name and my *love* for Amy Lee-, is a General MIDI / General Standard compatible SoundFont meant to bring great realism to your MIDI sequences.

Technical Info, Release notes

This is the final revision of Evanessence soundfont, released March 14th 2013.

Well, I have been fiddling with the soundfont format in the olden times but never got to distribute or being able to finally give expression to my idea of a soundfont back then, mainly because I forever lost all the work I had done on my previous soundfont. It would be a long story.

It has been a few years now since I started with this project to create a soundfont, like 10 years or so -around 2002-. It was meant to be a GM soundbank and these days I found the time to complete it, which certainly makes me happy. The actual work with the current version took like 1 year and 3 months, which is a lot less that it would require in the past, the means are much better now, there are a lot of free samples out there....

Any feedback is fine with me, either good or bad, I don't mind, but I created it around feedback and right now I am not going to continue with the soundfont, nor in the future. I insist that if you want to give it further development I am certainly supportive of it, although it is coherent, homogeneous and balanced in general now, there are always things one can add -General MIDI 2 would be certainly great-.

Technical Info

Evanessence contains 7700 samples, which are organized into 249 melodic presets, mapping all the General MIDI and GS presets and 27 drum kits in the channel 128 -drum kits which I also freed for use freely on every MIDI track, something that allows for greater flexibility-, weighing 1,70GB.

Please be aware that this soundfont in particular is very heavy on the number of voices it can use at the same time. It can easily reach 200-300 voices on an almost permanent basis, depending on the instruments used and the notes being played.

If the sounds start clipping and your processor can't handle the polyphony, try to change the output rate to 44 or 48KHz. The sound quality would be great in both cases and it certainly gives some leeway to the processor when you are using certain DAWs and software.

Hence 44 or 48KHz let you use more effects without degrading performance much. Please ignore these words if you have a very capable CPU because it will work at any output rate, no matter how many simultaneous voices you throw at it.

It is well known that audio will eat as many CPU cycles as you allocate to it, so having some flexibility is a good thing.

Release notes

These are the improvements and tweaks I have made slowly and progressively since the last official release of the soundfont, from a version I uploaded in November 2012.

I had been working on a Lite version of the soundfont, which will never see the day of light, and from those improvements and many other samples I had ready for it, it helped the final development of Evanessence. I was stuck with a lot of instrument generators -65536 instrument generators is the maximum amount a sounfont can handle before becoming corrupt and unusable, and I was always close to that number of generators-. So I got rid of instruments taking up a lot of space, samples, etc, which weren't necessarily beneficial for the sound quality or the soundfont itself and managed to save 20000 instrument generators, which allowed me for further development.

Additionally, I saved about 200MB of space even if I added more than a thousand new samples.... talk about optimization.

Here is a comprehensive list of the changes:

- About 2000 new samples added (most of them for the new drum kits, guitars, sfx effects, etc).

- New samples for the Distortion Guitar --336 samples in total. The sound of the guitar is much richer now, and you could even delete the Distortion 5ths and 3rds layer, along with the DX10 + MT2 layer and still get great sound from it --in fact it could sound better that way depending of your needs.

- Improved Overdriven guitar, featuring now around 150 samples.

- I also have updated both the Synth Basses -1 and 2- to give them more punch and a more synth-like classic sound. They sound way better and more punchy now.

- I have made many little tweaks and additions in the shape of samples and layers affecting different instruments ranging from the Bass, Ensemble, Orchestra, Reed, Pipe, Synth Lead, Synth Pad, Synth FX, Ethnics, SFX, Pianos, Chromatic Percussion, Guitars, Organs, SFX, etc. Basically the whole General MIDI presets sections have been affected by some changes one way or another.

- New Drum Kits sounding more professional than before. They are more demanding on polyphony, but they worth every bit of it --adding their multiple wav samples to a soundfont and testing them was fun. To give you an example, the Standard Drum Kit went from 13MB of the previous version to 58MB in the final version, and it shows!! The richness and quality of the sound is a lot more obvious --same for the Electronic and TR808-TR909, and the Jazz Kit.

- New GS set of instruments added. The whole GS compliant has been included. The Ukulele, the Jet Plane and Church Bells are my favourite additions of the soundfont in that particular part of the melodic presets.

- Professional sounding Electric Guitar. The sound existed before already, it's just that I had it muted in practical terms.

- A much better sound for the Rhodes piano, one of my favourite instruments in the soundfont, which was also unused before although I had the samples.

The fixes and changes are significant enough to the point that the sound of the soundfont is completely different in general.

Licensing information

Please note that Evanessence soundfont is a compilation of my own work and also editing from other different free sources and hence it is a free soundfont, thus not meant to redistribute or use it to sell it as a soundfont for commercial purposes. Other than that, you can sell any music and so on you have made with it, it's up to you.

I mean, the soundfont itself is royalty-free, so you can use it in your personal and commercial tracks without having to pay. However, the soundfont file cannot be sold as a soundfont for use as a commercial SF2.

Thanks to all the people who helped with this and the creators of many soundfonts around the world. It wouldn't have been possible without you! Many thanks to Kenneth too, the author of two wonderful, fabulous pieces of software; Synthfont and Viena.

Finally, for those interested in the Creative Commons License, here is a note. (many thanks Nils for your help on this)


License
=======
CC-BY-SA with the following exception:

The "share alike" condition is imperative if you modify the samples themselves or create new sample libraries with this licensed product.

However, produced music and other non-sample-library works can be licensed at will.

Attribution means keeping all authors information and this readme-file or its content in the release

If you want to create a fork, a modified version, of this sample library you have to release and distribute it under a different name. This clause itself is optional for derived works, so you can omit it in your own version.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Finally.... Thanks and I hope you enjoy Evanessence!

-Cose

http://www.myspace.com/cosevidal