KVR Audio

Karl the Hermit · Post by **Karl the Hermit** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 4:32 pm

1) What's everyone using in the way of free or inexpensive sound font players these days? I used Jeskola X-1 back in the day, but is there anything better out there?

2) How's this 32 vs 64 bit thing work with SF's? I recently found I had to use 32 bit FL Studio to use my FL SF Player. Do I need to use 64 bit SF's with a 64 bit SF Player to run inside a 64 bit host?

3) Anyone have a fave SF library they like and want to share?

bedjka · Post by **bedjka** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 5:25 pm

3) I have a few but nowadays free vsti's bring much better sounds, unless there is a particular reason you still want to use SF.

Sampletank 3 free (custom shop)

Kontakt 5 player free library

UVI workstation free pack

Karl the Hermit · Post by **Karl the Hermit** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 4:49 am

Mucho gracias, bedjka!

My knowledge of computer music tech is very 2003. Back then, it seems like soundfonts were more popular, but I have noticed a dearth of SF discussion in general on this site. I guess this explains why...

Thanks again!

Karl the Hermit · Post by **Karl the Hermit** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 5:12 am

I am a little confused on something, though...

These items all work as VSTi's inside you host of choice, but how is the midi controlled? Does the VSTi's midi functions take over, or is it controlled by the host. Also, I really liked the UVI you linked up... just how good is the arpeggiator on this thing?

bedjka · Post by **bedjka** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 12:41 pm

Not using any so i can't tell you about arpeggiators.

About midi, it's an interaction between the possibilities of the vst and the host.
I use EnergyXt in a very basic way, assigning a vst to a midi/instrument track, then in the openned vst window choosing and editing the sound i want on the track.
http://www.energy-xt.com/index.php?id=0104#

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 1:43 pm

Karl the Hermit wrote:1) What's everyone using in the way of free or inexpensive sound font players these days? I used Jeskola X-1 back in the day, but is there anything better out there?

I've just used the KVR Product Database advanced search function to look for free 64-bit instruments that can play SF2 files. And this one here looks very promising: http://www.kvraudio.com/product/sforzando-by-plogue

Karl the Hermit wrote:2) How's this 32 vs 64 bit thing work with SF's? I recently found I had to use 32 bit FL Studio to use my FL SF Player. Do I need to use 64 bit SF's with a 64 bit SF Player to run inside a 64 bit host?

The whole 32 / 64 bits thing has to do with RAM addresses. In 32 bits there are 2^32 = 4 billion addresses you can use. Each address is a byte, so you can address (use) 4 GB RAM. With 64 bit addresses you can use 16 million Terabytes (if my calculation and magnitude name is correct.)
Software components such as your host and the plugins interchange data by just handing each other the RAM address. So in order to do that correctly it must be in the same format, either 32 bits or 64 bits. So a 64-bit host requires 64-bit plugins as well.
Some hosts however are able to run 32-bits plugins with their own wrapper, and there's also generic plugin wrappers available that can convert the addresses in either way.

Now that's cleared out, the soundfont files themselves don't care whether loaded in a 32 bits or 64 bits plugin. So for the data it does not matter at all, since that's just read from disk and put into RAM by the plugin. All soundfonts should work regardless of what software you use.

Obsolete236871 · Post by **Obsolete236871** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 2:28 pm

For sf2 and sfz files, Sforzando is the way to go. It also comes with a nice little library of free sounds by the developer + you can find a pretty good collection of recently (last years) created free sfz libraries on the web. Other then that I would second bedjka's recommendations - Kontakt Player, UVI Workstation and Sampletank Free come with some nice and usable sounds!

Sound Font Questions