KVR Audio

P.T. · Post by **P.T.** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:11 am

If you are doing this for personal pleasure there is no problem, but if you are going top try to release your work you should consider that there are really no free orchestral sounds that are copyright free.

Most (probably all) are taken from copyrighted sources and repackaged.

Just something to consider.

goldbaker · Post by **goldbaker** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:57 pm

I know you're looking for soundfonts, but do a search for university of iowa music samples and you'll find complete scales sampled from virtually every instrument in the orchestra. They're aiff, mono, and of variable quality, but a great effort by the folks there all the same. There's also another orchestra (Philharmonia?) that has released a lot of free samples in mp3 format.

ocmtime · Post by **ocmtime** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 5:31 pm

does that mean I can't use them in a song that would be released comercially?

P.T. wrote:If you are doing this for personal pleasure there is no problem, but if you are going top try to release your work you should consider that there are really no free orchestral sounds that are copyright free.

Most (probably all) are taken from copyrighted sources and repackaged.

Just something to consider.

P.T. · Post by **P.T.** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 11:01 am

You could release and then hope they don't do anything.
Or you could ask permission to use.
Or if you think you may release something you could try to track down the company that owns the sound and buy it, which could be very difficult.

"Free" stuff can be a problem if you don't know the source.

I have pretty much stopped downloading sounds of questionable source just in case.

Bernard Quatermass · Post by **Bernard Quatermass** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 11:06 am

P.T. wrote:You could release and then hope they don't do anything.
Or you could ask permission to use.

Yeah, he's really gonna be hunted down by a soundfont creator.

P.T. · Post by **P.T.** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 11:16 am

I think you are missing the point.

These soundfonts are made by people who take copyrighted, for sale sounds and give them away for "free".

The originator of the sound might "hunt you down".

hollowsun · Post by **hollowsun** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:36 am

P.T. wrote:I think you are missing the point.

These soundfonts are made by people who take copyrighted, for sale sounds and give them away for "free".

Yep - and the aforementioned sf2midi shit hole is full of ripped off copyrighted, commercial material.

The mere mention of it here at KVR should warrant immediate post deletion IMO in the same way as recommending some illegal P2P/bit torrent thing.

But that place is not alone.

I may be wrong but no free orchestral, brass, strings, choir, etc., soundfont is going to be legit. These things require a *lot* of time, skill, expertise, facilities, staff and money to create and develop and no self-respecting developer is going invest all that and release in SF, let alone give it away for free - simple economics ... go figure!

Steve

marce · Post by **marce** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:16 am

I may be wrong but no free orchestral, brass, strings, choir, etc., soundfont is going to be legit.

You are wrong. Yep, lot of ripped soundfonts, specially in the sf2midi site, but there are legit soundfonts out there made by people that sampled the real thing and made them available for free.
Just some ones i remember: All the campbell soundfonts (solo strings, harpsichord, mallets, etc), Ethan Winer Bassoon, Bovbjerg Steinway piano (it was a nice project in it time) Maestro Clarinet and Piano, Protrax acoustic Guitar, Learjeff Rhodes, and many giga free files (G-town project, westgate studio ones, project sam others, etc).

So, with a little of patience you can found good soundfonts that are legit, not rippings of something. Some years ago, when Soundblaster Live was the bomb, i remember lots of projects from amateur/pro people making soundfonts and making them available for free. Today powerfull librarys has stopped that "soundfont development" a little much.

hollowsun · Post by **hollowsun** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:32 am

marce wrote:
I may be wrong but no free orchestral, brass, strings, choir, etc., soundfont is going to be legit.
You are wrong. Yep, lot of ripped soundfonts, specially in the sf2midi site, but there are legit soundfonts out there made by people that sampled the real thing and made them available for free.
Just some ones i remember: All the campbell soundfonts (solo strings, harpsichord, mallets, etc), Ethan Winer Bassoon, Bovbjerg Steinway piano (it was a nice project in it time) Maestro Clarinet and Piano, Protrax acoustic Guitar, Learjeff Rhodes, and many giga free files (G-town project, westgate studio ones, project sam others, etc).

I appreciate what you are saying marce but those are isolated instruments - and more power to them and their developers - but I was referring to big 'ensemble' sounds such as orchestra, brass, strings, choir, etc..

I can't imagine anyone ploughing the kind of time/expertise/financial resources into such a project/product for no return. Therefore any free offerings of this kind of material that you might see are almost certainly going to be a 'crack' of some form ... unless you know of anyone capable of hiring a full orchestra/brass section/choir and the engineers required to record that in a suitable venue with the programming staff required to then make that into a usable library to release ... FOR FREE?! That would have to be some serious, altruistic millionaire to achieve that!!!

Ain't gonna happen!

Steve

marce · Post by **marce** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:41 am

Hi Steve. Is true, there is not soundfont GM set that can be compared to any nice library out there. But i remember the "Fluid" soundfont GM project. The guy behind it worked a lot sampling things, and selecting free sources for the things he cant sample. I believe that that GM set can be considered free.
Additionaly there are soundfonts that has been ripped from hardware keyboards (that i dont know if is ok or not)
Said that, i believe that your opinion is valid. Best you can do if you want a nice orchestra sounds is to buy GPO or something similar.

vespers75 · Post by **vespers75** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:23 pm

You the same Marce from over at www.sf2midi.com?

marce · Post by **marce** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:19 pm

vespers75 wrote:You the same Marce from over at www.sf2midi.com?

I used to visit that place and download from there time ago when it started. But after some discussions about people uploading ripped soundfonts from commercial librarys, i leave it. Casually, one of the rippers was called "Marcelo", so, im not sure if i am who you expect.

hollowsun · Post by **hollowsun** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:01 pm

marce wrote:Hi Steve. Is true, there is not soundfont GM set that can be compared to any nice library out there. But i remember the "Fluid" soundfont GM project. The guy behind it worked a lot sampling things, and selecting free sources for the things he cant sample. I believe that that GM set can be considered free.

Marce - there are loads of people who believe they are doing the right thing to help the community but very often their good and generous intentions are littered with bad copyright conventions that can end them up in trouble. I speak with experience!!!

marce wrote:Additionaly there are soundfonts that has been ripped from hardware keyboards (that i dont know if is ok or not)

Depends - if they are from sample based synth (such as Triton/Motif/Fantom/whatever) it is most definitely NOT ok and is no different to sampling/converting a commercial sound library for free re-distribution. So, for example, sampling Roland's GM set and re-distributing that is illegal as one French company (whose name escapes me) discovered when Roland took them to to court (and won!) for doing just that a few years ago!

marce wrote:Said that, i believe that your opinion is valid. Best you can do if you want a nice orchestra sounds is to buy GPO or something similar.

Yes - I'm afraid so.

Steve

Vonbrucken · Post by **Vonbrucken** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:10 am

what about this ?
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 85&start=0

hollowsun · Post by **hollowsun** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:06 pm

Vonbrucken wrote:what about this ?
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 85&start=0

Assuming the guy is creating his own samples (which he appears to be), it's kosher.

But it's not orchestral.

Steve

Orchestra sound fonts