rgc:audio have released v1.0 of the freeware sfz SoundFont Player and entered beta testing of sfz+ Professional SoundFont Player. Both are available for Windows as VSTis, a DXi version of sfz+ is planned.

Featuring rgc:audio's "revolutionary High Quality sample-playback engine, both sfz and sfz+ are aimed to the SoundFont user looking for superb sound quality".

- sfz screenshot
- sfz+ screenshot

sfz+ was created to extend the SoundFont format to the maximum possible limit, while creating a rendering engine capable of putting any sampler in the market to shame in terms of sound quality.

Brief feature overview:

• High Quality band limiting sample-playback engine.
• 9 quality settings to allow precise CPU usage optimisation.
• 256 voices of polyphony, unlimited layers per voice.
• Fully Multi-timbral operation, supports all 16 MIDI channels.
• Several loading modes: Whole SoundFont, Single Program, Direct-from-Disk streaming.
• Stereo output (sfz) / Four stereo outputs, one stereo Effects output (sfz+).
• A resonant LPF, two LFOs and two Envelope Generators per layer.
• Stereo Chorus and Stereo Reverb.

sfz+ will cost $60 upon full release but it is available for a special introductory price of $50 whilst it is in the beta stage.

A comprehensive feature list and downloads can be found from the links to the right.