KVR Audio

Sho Geist · Post by **Sho Geist** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 9:03 am

Hi All,

I would just like some recommendations on what you guys think the best soundfont player is and also what the best GM/GS Soundfont is.

Thanks...

pitchdrifter · Post by **pitchdrifter** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 9:37 am

SFZ

and

The infinite free soundfont list

hth

Markus

dougsyo · Post by **dougsyo** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 1:14 pm

Sho Geist wrote: I would just like some recommendations on what you guys think the best soundfont player is and also what the best GM/GS Soundfont is.

IMHO the best soundfont players for Windows are sfz (free), sfz+ (shareware) and XS-1 (also shareware).

I have a number of free GM/GS soundfonts and one or two purchased ones. I have yet to find one that is uniformly good across the board. One may have a great piano but a lousy Hammond organ. Another may be good on strings but weak on brass. Another sounds good most of the time, but a few instruments have too much reverb.

I've largely stayed away from GM unless I need it for compatibility (the church's Yamaha keyboard, for example). Other non-GM sample sets (Kompakt, Sonic Synth, etc) just sound better.

Doug

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:23 pm

Have to agree with Doug on the quality of GM soundfonts. Although I have found sets that perform similarly across the entire GM set, it tends to be similarly poorly, unfortunately.

To get an entire GM bank that worked well, you'd be looking at a huge download, of course. This tends to result in GM banks with particular focus - so there will be some rubbish in there, to keep the size down.

There are few reasonable GM soundfonts here:
http://www.personalcopy.com/sfarkfonts1.htm
Check the thread in the second message for more, though. There are some good single instrument or small collections around that really shine, if you look long enough.

Sho Geist · Post by **Sho Geist** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 12:34 am

yeah the reason i'm interested in GM/GS soundfonts is just to check out midi files that i want to rework before i actually get started on them. I would like the collection to sound good, but I don't really feel like doing a "whole" lot of research to collect various soundfonts and compile them all together just for this purpose of checking the midi files and their patches out. I might be willing to spend a bit of money if the GM soundfont collection was good enough though. So any collections you guys know of that would suit my needs, or just the best of the "decent" ones?

Also how about a gm midi softsynth player? any quality ones exist?

garret · Post by **garret** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 1:43 am

Sho Geist wrote:yeah the reason i'm interested in GM/GS soundfonts is just to check out midi files that i want to rework before i actually get started on them.

For that purpose, you can probably get by with the Fluid3 GM bank and Sfz... Fluid is big, so you may have to use Direct-From-Disk (DFD) mode in SFZ to get it to load...

Download Fluid3 from www.hammersound.net. It's listed under collections... I think the download is 69MB.

Realfont is also pretty good, but maybe not as consistent.

http://www.personalcopy.com/sfarkfonts1.htm

Cheers,
-Garret

Sho Geist · Post by **Sho Geist** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 1:49 am

Thanks for that tip...anybody got any other suggestions?

tERMoBLUe · Post by **tERMoBLUe** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 2:27 am

here, this is my favorite: http://www.kvr-vst.com/get/195.html - jeskola xs-1

...and as cream above on this - very good spectral judges...see self: http://web.hibo.no/~mva/jeskola/xs1/test

...try ...cu

tro

Best Soundfont Player and best GM/GS Soundfonts?