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

[Sarcyan]

Final advice and recommendations

Since I have completed the readme and release notes, I would like to give you some recommendations regarding soundfonts that feature excellent sound quality, listing both free and commercial soundfonts.

These are some equally fantastic and excellent ones:

Arachno Soundfont, Merlin Symphony, SGM 2.01, Fluid R3, GMR Basico, GeneralUserGS, silverspring, GenevoiceGM64Pro, Titanic, Aspirin, proVitamin MKII, etc etc...

For those interested in professional sounding Reverb plugins, Anwida is an excellent commercial reverb plugin. You can find it here:

http://www.anwida.com/product.asp?pid=2

If you are interested in an equally fantastic and amazing free reverb effect that sounds like the professional ones I'd recommend Freeverbtoo (love the Init (Insert) setting), which features both 32 and 64bits VST plugins and it has a DX version too.

You can find it here:

http://www.sinusweb.de/freetoo.html

Enjoy. Cheers

[Diego_C]

Downloading your pack me too...thanks really a lot for doing and sharing it.
I wish you a nice weekend!
Cheers!

[Sarcyan]

Thanks for your kind comments Diego_C.

I also uploaded the file to my Skydrive account.

Skydrive is now free and you don't need to have a Hotmail account or something like that to download files anymore (it was a requirement not much time ago).

This is the download link from Skydrive:

http://sdrv.ms/WDSv0R

enjoy, see you!

[paul mueck]

Dear Cose,

first of all thanks a lot for your work!

Both download links are not working for me.
SkyDrive says:
"This element is possibly not her or it's not available anymore"
GoogleDocs says:
"Unfortunalety there's no access to this document"

Thanks for your help

Best regards

Paul

[Sarcyan]

Dear Cose,

first of all thanks a lot for your work!

Both download links are not working for me.
SkyDrive says:
"This element is possibly not her or it's not available anymore"
GoogleDocs says:
"Unfortunalety there's no access to this document"

Thanks for your help

Best regards

Paul

Hello Paul.
I am sorry if that happened to you, although it was a calculated risk and it was me who deleted the old files. The problem is that I updated the soundfont with a late fix -found a rogue sample in a melodic preset-, and added a few samples and some other interesting changes.

Hence I had to reupload the whole thing to Google drive and Skydrive once more.

The positive side of it is that it means that the version you can download now is the best version that there ever could be.

These links are there to stay for years to come.

The finalization of this particular soundfont is something I wanted to accomplish before, and although these things are typically thought out well beforehand, it can be more challenging at times than you expect it to be, while other times it was a breeze too, so it kind of compensates...

I am going to update the initial post of this thread with the new links.

These are the new, final and concluding links to download the soundfont:

http://sdrv.ms/103NOfg (Skydrive)

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

Enjoy Paul. Cheers.

EDIT: To the rest of you who downloaded this file before, PLEASE UPDATE to the new version. It has some very interesting additions and improvements compared to the previous version.

-Cose

[paul mueck]

Hello Cose,

thank you very much for your quick and long answer.
I'm just downloading from SkyDrive.

I can imagine that it has been a huge project and a lot of work,
even if I only can suppose what I will get.
But it must be great!

After years of doing nothing I'm about to start making music again.
Virtuell sounds and simular things a quite new to me.
Last time I worked with the old Atari and different hardware synthesizers.
So I think your work is one great thing to start again.

My best best wishes to you

kind regards

Paul

[audiojunkie]

Thanks for this! I hope to download this really soon!

--Sean

[Sarcyan]

Many thanks to all of you for your feedback.

UPDATE, May 1st 2013:

I updated the soundfont a couple of days ago, May 1st --new download links can be found in the first page too.

It's time to move on for me but I achieved my goal now. Nothing is perfect but the main weaknesses left before have been basically addressed in these two months.

I tried to follow the advice of a person who believes in this soundfont and knows his stuff and address the weakest parts of the soundfont. Namely the woodwinds.

That's why I continued and retouched it.

I totally replaced the Brass, the Strings Ensemble -the previous version took too much space, it was prone to add a lot of voices to the mix without much benefit, etc-.

I also completely replaced the Shakuhachi, the Koto features 48kHz samples now. I fixed the unbalanced sound of the Piccolo -loud- & the Charang -it was so quiet behind the harmony- among a few others tweaks and fixes here and there.

These are the new download links --the old links still work but I'd wholeheartedly recommend the new version.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6caGN_ ... sp=sharing

http://sdrv.ms/103NOfg

Evanessence isn't going to be replaced, ever!!

Even so, there is a slight possibility that a continuation of the former Musical Box; a new version called Musical Box 2, or Musical Box Fusion or Mega Musical Box -still thinking about a possible name if it is ever completed-, becomes a reality some day.

However, we could be talking about Gigabytes worth of data here, and the soundfont won't be completely created by me, but a friend.

It's just something that might happen... or not. I am not going to make promises on that to be honest.

Take care of yourself people. Enjoy.
Regards

-Cose

[kyrmaan]

Thanks a lot for sharing such an impressive work!

[barehill]

I am a long time fan of Synthfont and have downloaded dozens of synthfont instruments and collections over the years searching for the 'perfect' instruments. Periodically I look for new compilations and I must say that the Evanessence 2 is really phenomenal, the best I've used yet. I always had trouble with woodwinds - of all types, and most brass. But Evan'2 is wonderful. The only over-ride I use is for the piano, I like the Steinway a bit better and a Stradivarius for the violin. Everthing else is fantastic, strings, wide assortment of drums ....
Thanks for all the hard work, it must have been daunting.

[cambar]

Hi!

First of all, what an amazing soundfont! Thanks very much for your work!!

I'm trying to batch convert midi drum loops to wav using Timidity++ and it's the first time I use soundfonts so it is a newbie question. When I simply create a config file such as:

dir C:\timidity
dir C:\timidity\Musix
soundfont "Evanessence2.SF2"

I get the standard drum set.

How can I do to use a different drum set, for example Electro drumset?

[Sarcyan]

Hi!

First of all, what an amazing soundfont! Thanks very much for your work!!

I'm trying to batch convert midi drum loops to wav using Timidity++ and it's the first time I use soundfonts so it is a newbie question. When I simply create a config file such as:

dir C:\timidity
dir C:\timidity\Musix
soundfont "Evanessence2.SF2"

I get the standard drum set.

How can I do to use a different drum set, for example Electro drumset?

Hello cambar! I am sorry for the late reply but I haven't been in the forum for ages, so to say, as personal life and other priorities took over.

That being said, I am not familiar with Timidity++ and I think I've tried it just once. I wish I could help you more in that regard. All I found on the matter is this:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/dap ... cfg.5.html

I wonder though if you know BassMIDI driver and Coolsoft's VirtualMIDISynth. From the little I could grasp they work in a similar way compared to Timidity, but they seem to be more popular than Timidity these days, whatever the reason is.

Additionally, I published Musyng -after more than a year ever since the former Evanessence was published, and 3 years since I began with this soundfont- today, so if you are still around and if you are keen on checking it out... I shall go into detail later.

Have a nice day. Cheers. Au revoir cambar!

[Sarcyan]

Musyng soundfont full README

Background info: With the perspective of time and after Evanessence 2 was published I had decided that I wouldn’t be modifying the soundfont ever since. Because of the fact that I had set my personal priorities, and kinda had to meet a deadline back then, I wanted to share it and leave it aside.

In that sense it was liberating getting it done, and not feeling like you had to worry about it anymore, save for the questions people could ask and stuff like that.

Then in that situation, it’s when I started to edit the soundfont at my own pace, when using DAWs or just having plain fun sequencing MIDI files in Noteworthy Composer 2 and Anvil Studio, and playing them with different soundfonts and synths.

Taking into account the fact that I didn’t have a deadline in mind, I just kept slowly brainstorming and changing it offline, not even thinking about publishing it, which is a relieving sensation, ‘cos unconsciously it makes you feel there isn’t pressure for releasing anything, and you don’t even care about that, which immensely helps to take it one day at a time.

Priorities changed, in personal life too, and when it came to music my focus was also different, mainly on learning to use the DAWs I had purchased so I could create some decent music –using editors like Noteworthy Composer 2 (MIDI editors are easier for me to use than DAWs) and then a DAW to complete the mix- some day and save it on the PC.

Oddly enough, even days ago I wasn’t thinking about publishing this soundfont. Just recently I got interested in publishing it again. My MIDI files now sound fantastic with the several favourite soundfonts I have /will list them bellow/ and Musyng, when I play them with any program.

In other words, I edited the soundfont from time to time without any pressure and initially for personal use, just to make it as much as usable as possible in most situations.

Evanessence 2 is an average, somewhat decent soundfont, and I was happy with it at the time, because it seemed balanced to me for the most part –it sounded nice to me taking into account the deadline I had imposed myself-, but now with these changes and an extensive overhaul Musyng has become a potentially good, fine soundfont.

There were unique samples within Evanessence, it was kinda balanced (save the last presets in the GM specifications, that were a mish-mash in that regard) which was one of my goals, for it to be uniform and solid, but in the end some instruments needed either a full overhaul or replacing some samples. Some instruments can be duds, which can’t be helped at times when you work on a GM compatible soundfont. And I tried to fix those too, also little panning problems, velocity issues, and so on and so forth. The list always goes on.

Plus, my intention with Evanessence was to make a subtle, kind to your ears soundfont, with a cool spatial stereo sound to it.

This works very well for me, because for now I still have a very sensitive hearing, which I am proud of –something that can’t be said about my eyesight, since I was born myopic-. I gotta say that there are soundfonts which are more lively than Musyng. But Musyng has been improved in that sense (compared to Evanessence), while keeping balance.

Giving full volume to it though would require re-engineering the entire thing which means increasing the volume of many samples (and this soundfont has a lot of them). There are many ways to do that, within the Soundfont editor, or using an external wav editor, the possibilities are many.

The issue with that is not getting it done, it can be done with some patience, but the problem is that you’d have to listen to lots and lots MIDI files to find where an instrument is too loud or where it gets hidden behind the harmony.

This is made more complicated by the fact that doing this requires a lot of re-testing and time, and as I said, it can be a nightmare. One of the goals behind this complete overhaul was to get every sound right and that instruments needed to be visible and distinguishable in every MIDI. I think that this is one of the reasons this overhaul makes this soundfont going from decent to good, compared to Evanessence. Say…. like going from a 128 kbps MP3 to a 320 kbps MP3.

In regards to the overall volume of the soundfont I gotta add that I like standards, and I decided those as a clear goal very early in the project, which –whether it is more or less correct- is a good thing in my opinion. I improved the liveliness of the soundfont while still being true to myself.

On a different note, trying to give all the melodic presets a more spatial sound by adding more copied layers might not work at all, and in fact it can be counter-productive sometimes.

If you have a layered instrument and a non layered one, they can combine very well in the mix. If all are layered (and by that I mean copied layers to *enhance* the sound) in my experience the sound can get muddy and while it sounds spatial and okay, compressors might have more work to do to keep the sound under control, and the sound sort of gets faltering in some cases if you just layer copies of the same samples.

These kind of things are a mixed bag. Some instruments NEED that layering, others are very complex and layering them without getting them sound muddy or their presence being too much in a song, mudding others, can be a challenge.

In addition, as I said before, it wasn’t my intention initially to publish this soundfont, but as shallow as it might sound, I am a big fan of Gareth Bale (I consider him a hero) and Real Madrid won the Champions league, and that night I saved the file and decided to upload it in order to share it. Yeah, that was one of the main reasons I thought it would be a good idea to share an updated version with people.

Anyways, it’s not my intention to write a thesis here, so I will try to sum up what’s new in Musyng.

In the end, with Musyng I ended up making a complete overhaul. I can’t remember all the changes I’ve made since it has been more than a year ever since I published Evanessence.

But here are the changes I can remember of from the top of my head. (a year and a month is a lot of time, so some aren't listed)

- Name change. As you can see, it’s called Musyng now. Evanessence began as Musica 7 back in 2011.

Then I published a WIP beta called Musical Box in May 2012. Then I made a few tweaks to it afterwards and finally published a decent soundfont called Evanessence in 2013. By decent I mean being happy with the result –although more testing was needed, since the foundation was good in the end, but everything can improve.

Musyng as a name is a pun, and comes from the original name when the project started in 2011, called Musica 7 - which was a 1.84GB soundfont that needed a lot of tweaking, then it became Musical Box, and Evanessence afterwards – plus a little tribute to Synthfont and synths in general –hence the “syn”, and it tries to resemble the word “muse”.

- Additionally, I fixed various key range and velocity issues. There were quite a few instruments affected by that.

- Extensive overhaul of many instruments, and other changes in the list of melodic presets.

- Power drums improved, basically a snare which was wrongly panned to the left and sounded too powerful in any mix, not to mention out of place.

- Enhanced (more noticeable, haven’t touched the level of vibrato much) vibrato for the harmonica.

- Several balance fixes that I found over time and hadn’t notice before. That’s one of the perks of taking things one step at a time, in the tranquillity of knowing that you don’t put expectations into something.

- New Distortion Guitar. This is the instrument I am most proud of in the new version. It certainly took me a while to mod it.

It’s based on a single layer from the Arachno Soundfont (by Maxime Abbey), one of the best soundfonts ever made), more concretely a layer from the Distortion Guitar melodic preset, and what I consider the best distortion guitar sound in a soundfont yet made!

But it is a sound that was used in conjunction with others and somewhat toned down because of that, perhaps. Plus the samples are so good that they can take some “abuse” and can be pushed hard without them clipping.

Initially, the idea was that I didn’t want to have a distortion guitar with so many layers in Musyng, unlike the previous Distortion Guitar in Evanessence which had a lot of layers (which it probably needed), and I preferred to keep it simple but fully functional. So I borrowed Maxime Abbey’s samples and started with that single layer.

You might be wondering why I favour this guitar so much… Well, I it has superb high quality samples to begin with, and most important of all, it sounds catchy and MIDI, hence memorable, while still sounding realistic and professional.

To sum it all up I modded it, some of the loop points for sustain where not to my liking, especially the low notes, so after some fine tuning I added a few extra samples which offered seamless integration with the Distortion Guitar from Arachno Soundfont and the result is almost perfect, at least for me.

Super clear, raw sound, great sound for the low notes, and a good guitar for almost everything. It gives me… feelings…

The version included in Musyng is adapted to the general tone of the soundfont. Anyone who wants a more raw, wild version, I can gladly share it with you.

http://1drv.ms/1mCggAw

- Fixed the Honky Tonk piano, the previous one was utterly broken.

- Improved Mute Guitar melodic preset (same samples, more realistic)

- Removed samples and layers for the Overdriven Guitar, they weren’t improving the sound, on the contrary, the Overdriven Guitar sounds much much better now.

- New Tenor Sax.

- Improved Flute. Better samples, nicer sound, less layers.

- Improved the Bagpipe. I borrowed the sound from the now discontinued SoniVOX GS250, which imho has the best Bagpipe of any soundfont.

Bagpipes in my homeland are like what guitars are to Synyster Gates, so you get the idea. Still not an instrument where soundfonts shine though.

- Standard Drums kit, improved the snares, I never liked how they sound but I couldn’t get it fixed in time when I published Evanessence 2.

- Removed the Rock Kit, which was a beta, but it wasn’t worth it to fix it entirely.

- Many many other things and tweaks I don’t remember of, but it’s noticeable in the overall impact of the sound compared to the former Evanessence soundfont.

Final notes and thanks:

I’ve always been passionate about Soundfonts, ever since I tried my first one back in 2002, at a time where I didn’t have a regular internet connection, and used CDs to get samples from them to use in different instruments. I lost all the work I had made in a year ‘cos I was quite reckless and began playing with the partitions of my HD, eventually leading to losing all the info I had and my soundfont, so I kinda wanted to pay off an old score.

It took me a few sleepless nights and carefully choosing the patches, and I don’t have access to all the patches/instruments I’d want to! But even so, I am done with that, probably forever as priorities lead me to new priorities and it is a hobby that can take a lot of time.

I will watch from the sidelines, hoping that Jazman GM 32 bits (current Jazman GM successor) comes out someday, among other soundfonts like potential second iterations of the best free soundfonts these days –which I will list later.

Jazman GM is probably the best soundfont ever made and a second iteration -planned somewhere between the current date and the year 2020- has to be incredible overall.

Additionally, with Musyng I think I achieved not only a fine balance but also being able to rub shoulders with the stars of the stars in the Soundfont world, as it is quite usable with any other soundfont.

The focus is a bit of everything, but mainly orchestral sounds, although it doesn’t shine at classic gaming, the MIDIs from Age of Empires 2 sound CD like with it.

Dance music, while not the main focus, is also doable with it. For the gabbers, there is even a Gabba drum kit. Not very powerful, but that can be easily overcome, so there it is for you raving gabbers to use!!!

As for the Soundfont format itself, I certainly spent money on it purchasing most (if not all) commercial GM soundfonts, and I don't live in the lap of luxury but I like the variety and quality of certain commercial soundfonts.

The soundfont scene has been slowly evolving with some classic Soundfont collection sites falling into disrepair and the general shift in interest towards a different approach, now the largest modern soundfont activity seems to be in the professional music composition business.

Well, if you are thinking about creating a Soundfont in the future…or something similar I’d encourage you to try.

If you want to go professional there are ways to make it balanced, but if you just prefer to trust your ears instead, using plain MIDI players without any effects such as Noteworthy Composer 2, XMPlay (you can disable reverb and the like) or Synthfont (which is a DAW but you can completely disable the FX) and listening to MIDIs back and forth, is the way to go.

From personal experiencie, just make sure that the instruments intended to be playing the melody aren’t quiet and hidden behind the harmony compared to other instruments.

Use greatly balanced soundfonts such as the Roland SC-55 or Jazman GM as a reference, or also the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, or the neat the Roland TTS1 to have an idea as to how the song should sound.

Besides that, there is a collection of MIDIs called “MIDI test”, which is perfect to check how the instruments sound ranging from the first melodic preset (Acoustic Grand Piano) to the 128th in the melodic presets list. I uploaded it here:

http://1drv.ms/1ocIkM5

My favourite instruments of the Musyng soundfont

- Acoustic Grand Piano (someone very knowledgeable asked me to change it time ago ‘cos he thinks there are better piano soundfonts out there, so I added their choice to the soundfont in some way, but I love this one, especially because how articulate and rich the low notes are. In that sense, it has a single sample for every single note, and while it takes up a lot of memory that pays off at times. This piano takes up like 8% of the soundfont).

- Rhodes Piano. I like that organic sound.

- The Nylon guitar, sounds very realistic, with a nice, realistic screech sound.

- Electric Guitar --realistic.

- The Distortion Guitar. Sounds MIDI, hence memorable, yet raw and quite realistic.

- Strings Ensemble (already a favourite from Evanessence 2).

- Pizzicato Strings, nuff' said.

- The Doo Vox. Great definition, fun to listen to --thanks Kenneth.

- Muted Trumpet. Very clean.

- The Bowed Pad (among a few other Synth pads).

- Warm Strings, sounds as if you were in a church. Beware the high notes though. Sounds really really beautiful with the song “Blue da da da” by Eiffel65 and any other featuring it.

- Electronic, TR-808, Room, Standard (with the new snares), Jazz and Orchestra Drum kits. Electronic has very peculiar sounds, it adapts well to almost any MIDI, so does TR-808, Room has some of my favourite snares in any soundfont I listened to, Jazz/Standard are high quality, and the Orchestal Drums have very realistic and great concert cymbal sounds!

Finally, I’d like to thank people like Kenneth (he suggested me to change the Doo Vox and some other melodic presets and provided me with better samples, and of course for being so awesome creating Synthfont and Viena, etc), John (for his feedback and believing in me to make things even better), Charlie (also for his feedback and being a charming person overall) from the bottom of my heart because of their help and feedback which, whether good or bad, I am okay with.

Plus I’d like to deeply thank many many many other people I can’t thank personally here because I rushed things a bit when I began obsessing with soundfonts again and started making a collection with my own sounds and other sounds I got from the net but never ever could thank them ‘cos I downloaded so much stuff (some I discarded, other stuff I kept and used) and had so many links and files (sf2, wav samples, etc) that as time went on my memory went fuzzy as to where I got the samples. :O Some were anonymous anyways, but still…. To those uncredited people, THANKS THANKS THANKS. I’d never be able to make it without you!!!

[Sarcyan]

Some personal recommendations on Soundfonts and synths

Since I usually play around with more than one single soundfont or synth, as they have their own unique sounds I think that making a list of fine soundfonts might be helpful for people:

Jazman PRO GM 24-bit Soundfont by Digital Pro-Audio Samples: I LOVE this one --as I pointed out before.

It sounds full and luxuriant, it has super clean and crisp sound overall, and the same can be said about the drums.

This is a commercial soundfont (my favourite commercial soundfont ever) and a very hard one to beat, quality wise. Probably the best commercial soundfont yet made!!! I think it’s worth every penny.

This soundfont is also balanced and great for composing, because it’s well done and it’s solid, consistent all-around.

Jazman GM can be found here:

http://www.gmsoundfont.com/

Arachno Soundfont by Maxime Abbey: A classic, outstanding soundfont. Some very exuberant sounds, the guitars .., along with some Synth FX and pianos, are so good, love ‘em to death. This soundfont has been studied very precisely, to the letter, as they say, and it shows. Plus, it excels at classic games. And for its size it has a very high quality sound overall.

Sybaritic and elegant, it’s a very popular soundfont and for a good reason.

You can find it the soundfont's website, which is here

http://www.arachnosoft.com/main/home.php

Timbres of Heaven by Don Allen: This one came out as a surprise and I found it by sheer chance. It is the most modern, up to date free soundfont out there, afaik. I think it is also evolving.

I am so glad I did find it, as it’s one of the best free soundfonts that I’ve listened to to date --and I’ve listened to quite a few. It is not only General MIDI (GM) compatible but it also features the GS melodic presets, plus the XG standard presets, and it packs all of that in a manageable amount of MB, which makes it the more impressive. It’s a keeper.

It also has a proper Ukulele sound, an instrument I could never get samples from.

Don Allen’s soundfont can be found here:

http://midkar.com/soundfonts/index.html

Roland SC-55 by Anonymous brilliant person: This is a little hidden marvel that I am so glad I found recently too. Probably my favourite soundfont in the way it has been engineered, as it was built to replicate the sound of a dedicated hardware sound module, which is no easy feat. At 25MB in size it features all the melodic presets of the legendary Roland SC-55, which was the first ever General MIDI sound module.

From the little I could grasp and some comparisons with the real thing I’ve seen on the net, I am impressed at how close to the original it can be!

This is a gem in every possible way, as it is a very balanced soundfont, with clearly defined sounds overall in almost every song you can discern every single instrument quite easily, something that’s easier said than done. If you add to that it’s MIDI’d sound.., I just wonder what’s not to love.

Plus it’s loaded with high quality sounds and perfectly balanced, so you can use it as your default soundfont like any other in this list. Don’t be fooled by how many megabytes it does use, this is top-notch, champions material. Congrats to the author, whoever he/she is.

This Roland SC-55 soundfont can be found here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kdi7nqkqpnsre ... 0SC-55.rar

Here is a comparison with the real Roland SC-55 made by Ultimate Doomer (a geek of the highest order that I appreciate a lot for some reason, whom I consider a little genius) and as you can see, the Roland SC-55 soundfont is surprisingly accurate in comparison to the original Roland SC-55:



Roland TTS1 Soft Synth: I am paraphrasing myself here; “The Roland TTS1 is the best *bang for your buck* synth if you want to have a pretty much hassle free synth for your music! It is plenty fine. It is also an excellent start point to being to compose music and drafting sounds because having been made by Roland, it has a perfect balance and good sounds for a start!

I consider this wonderful Roland TTS1 a great, almost essential, tool for any beginner with DAWs or MIDI editors. My favourite, non Soundfont, synth.

It's not very expensive as it is bundled with Music Creator 6 by Cakewalk. You can find Music Creator here:

http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/Music-Creator

Roland TTS1 is a DXi instrument, which means that it can only be loaded with a DXi compatible program like Music Creator, Band in a Box, or by using a VST which is actually DXi wrapper called DXishell.

This essential DXi wrapper can be found here:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7&t=177538

And if you want to realise its true potential, watch youtube videos of Spaztique using it. Some pretty cool stuff there.

I created a video on it back in the day, showing how it sounds:



GMR Basico 1.1; very nice Hi-Fi, soft and spatial sound (in fact it is neck and neck with Crisis 3.0 there, my preferred soudnfonts in that regard).

It was created by a music teacher (wonder if he would remind me of my music teacher IRL, mine was really serious, I have never seen the guy smile).

48KHz samples galore (you can push this soundfont like crazy), Fluid based, which is really nice. It has the best Trumpet and Accordion sound I’ve ever heard on a soundfont.

Also the Recorder is probably the best I remember of, so is the Electric Piano –48KHz samples, nicely designed, great spatial sound when moving from left to right. Great balls of fire sounds amazing with it 'cos of this piano.

Good sound, clean and great drums (in fact they are amongst my favourite drums in the free soundfonts category, plus sounds like the congas and bongos are awe inspiring), and more than 400MB in size… This one is another keeper. Needs a finer balance in some instruments though.

This excellent GMR can be found here (it has two versions, GMR Basico, which is free but the author accepts donations, and GMR Music Pro, which is the same as GMR Basico but a commercial soundfont, and features many extra presets from worldwide instruments). I have both, and they are very similar, save for the many extra presets in the commercial one.

Give this one a try, it’s REALLY worth it. Webpage here:

http://gmrsf2.blogspot.com.es/

Some more…

SGM V2.01 Soundfont by Shan; this one is sooooooo good, everyone recommends it and there isn’t much to say about it other than most people have this one amongs their favourites. Well balanced, no major flaws, lots of nice sounds. This was the best soundfont when it came out. –I think it was released back in 2008

It can be downloaded at Shan’s page:

http://www.geocities.jp/shansoundfont/

Titanic GM/GS by Luke Sena: My favourite classic soundfont which I used as the basis for mine when I began with soundfonts again and the familiar Vienna from the Creative’s soundcards was not an option, and I felt more lost that Amelia Earhart, as they say. I discovered it in 2011 and it triggered my interest in soundfonts again.

Nice balance overall and the guy who made it certainly knew his stuff. I will be always grateful to the author, ‘cos I used this soundfont as the basis to learn using a new Soundfont editor and began tweaking its presets before re-building a new one from scratch.

FluidR3 GM; another classic Soundfont that never gets old, not important flaws that I know of, this one has aged really well, and its orchestral sounds are really good. I wasn’t into soundonfts when it came out but in the late 90s it was the most acclaimed soundfont iirc.

My parents couldn’t buy me a new PC and my PC didn’t have enough memory back then to run it anyways.

Aspirin soundfont; 16 MB of raw power and awesomeness, totally different and unique compared to anything else.

Crisis 3.0: a soundfont with great potential and whose subtleness I love, it’s my favourite thing about it by far. Some exceptional samples, kind to your ears…It drives me crazy, in a very good way, in that sense my dreamed kind of sound.. But, there is always a but, alas it’s kinda broken, the balance is where this soundfont shows its main weakness, and it’s a very important one, it breaks apart sometimes there, and subtleness doesn’t mean that an instrument has to be lifeless, which is the case with some of the instruments that don’t appear. Still, give this one a try, some sounds are really worth it. Listening to it is a pleasure to me though, I could listen to it for days and days! I am serious here. It has my dreamed sound but not perfectly implemented though.

Other commercial soundfonts

Edgesounds SoniqBear Pro120. Another favourite commercial soundfont of mine, perfect for dance music and it has very special sounds, like Aspirin, really cool –nothing quite like it. My 2nd favourite commercial soundfont yet made.

This is the official homepage:

http://www.edgesounds.com/Products/Soun ... 20Pro.aspx

proVITAMIN by Reason Banks; another good commercial soundfont, not bad at all, very nice sounds, save the Distortion Guitar, which is very bad, alas, and that’s odd ‘cos the rest of the instruments are pretty decent, actually, and the Overdriven Guitar sounds plenty fine. Other than that little flaw, it’s totally recommendable!

proVITAMIN MKII, the Reason banks soundfont, can be found here:

http://www.reasonbanks.com/refill_proVitamin.html

Merlin Symphony; a neat soundfont overall, especially good at orchestral music, although the drums can be a bit weak overall, the rest is very solid. You can find it here:

http://soundfonts.gonet.biz/search.php? ... ame=Merlin Symphony v1.21

I got it two years ago for 10€ or so.

Best software to use with Soundfonts and Synths

I won't mention DAWs --two of my favourites are Synthfont and FL Studio, but that's not the point of this section.

Audio recording software. If you edit MIDI files with programs like the excellent Noteworthy Composer 2, they don't have an option to record their sound built-in, so you depend on an external DAW or a program that allows you to record the sound that comes out directly from your computer.

My soundcard doesn't feature a "What you hear" option to record sound, so it depends on external programs for that.

The best one I have so far is Audio Recording Wizard by NowSmart, which is my favourite of them all.

You can find Audio Recording Wizard in its official webpage:

http://www.nowsmart.com/

Wish I had found Audio Recording Wizard before, as it records every sound from your computer and it does it elegantly and with a very easy to understand interface. It can also save you LOTS of time with DAWs like FL Studio.

I mean, FL Studio needs some time to render a song, especially if you use high precision, 512 point sinc recording.

Audio Recording Wizard has many advantages because of that, since you can play the song as intended before recording in FL Studio, and start recording in Audio Recording Wizard while you play it in real time with FL Studio.

This also helps with other DAWs that can render any song internally, it is just more comfortable and easy, even with Synthfont -which renders files very quickly-, because the internal volume of your soundcard in the OS is also considered and this means that...

....what you get is what you are listening to exactly!

As I said, wish I had discovered this program before. And the best thing is that you don't need to set it up to record an amazing sound you got in a DAW (setting the DAW so it can just play certain parts of a song can be a chore).

This helps you with presentations or ideas you might have. Use your DAW to play some amazing stages in songs, and record just those parts you prefer... No need to set up a time, or markers, or whatever in your favourite DAW.

Another program that also records what you are hearing from your computer is this Aktiv MP3 Recorder, which can be found here;

http://www.goforsharing.com/home-mainme ... u-130.html

There is also another one called Free Sound Recorder

http://www.sound-recorder.biz/freesoundrecorder.html

Anyways, I just prefer Audio Recording Wizard over those two for several reasons.

For those who want to record MIDI directly from a Soundfont, for comparison purposes or whatever, Direct MIDI to MP3 is an excellent program.

http://www.pistonsoft.com/midi2mp3.html

For anyone wanting to compose their own music and tablatures, like me (I kinda suck at DAWs for now) Noteworthy Composer 2 is one of the best programs, in my opinion. I use it regularly and it's really good. Besides that, the program isn't expensive and the people behind it treat their customers really well.

If you want to edit MIDI files, my favourite is Anvil Studio. You can thoroughly edit a MIDI file with it, and it also lets you use VSTs and stuff like that.

The worthy and exceptional Noteworthy Composer can be found here (official homepage):

http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/

Additionally, if you want to use a high quality Soundfont to play the songs of classic games, you might need (if you don't have a Creative card) either BassMIDI driver or Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth (beware they don't remove Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth from your MIDI devices list, this happened to me with the 1.9.1 version of VirtualMIDISynth and I lost any possibility to compose MIDI music on Noteworthy or listening to MIDI regularly on a compatible multimedia player, and it certainly was a hassle to fix it).

If you want to use your VSTis and DXi instruments, soft synths which are GM compatible, for classic games or as regular MIDI players, you might need an utility called loopMIDI.

A youtuber called Ultimate Doomer explains it in full detail in this video:

[Sarcyan]

Important note for FL Studio users.

How to use Soundfonts in FL Studio 11 -or any version of FL Studio for that matter-.

It is very easy, at least once you get the handle of it.

First of all, you have to copy the soundfonts you want to use or your favourite soundfonts to the folder below:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Image-Line\FL Studio 11\Data\Patches\Soundfonts

That's the usual folder where FL Studio gets installed, but if you chose another folder, the whole address of the directory might look different. No worries, whatever the directory is, the address should look be something along the lines (the directory of your choice)/FL Studio 11\Data\Patches\Soundfonts

Once you've copied and pasted your favourite soundfonts to the FL Studio folder, it is very easy. You will see a tab called Soundfonts in your FL Studio browser.

The soundfonts of your choice will appear there, then you just have to load a MIDI file and drag and drop the soundfont you want in a given track to that track, and there you go!

FL Studio has two utilities (the most advanced version, Signature Bundle, is the only one that loads Soundfonts, afaik) to load Soundfonts, Fruity Soundfont Player and DirectWave

Fruity Soundfont Player appears by default when you drag and drop a Sooundfont to a track. DirectWave doesn't, but it has an important advantage over Fruity Soundfont Player, and it's that it will download Soundfonts of any size.

I don't know what's the exact limit for Fruity Soundfont Player to load Soundfonts, but it doesn't load Soundfonts which take up more than 1GB of RAM, I think. It doesn't accept Crisis 3.0 or Musyng, for instance. (there is a fix for that, more on it below)

In addition to this, Fruity Soundfont player preloads the entire soundfont of your choice into memory. Take this into account because your memory can go easily over budget because modern GM/GS soundfonts can take up to 200-300MB of RAM with ease.

That's why I think they limited it to only load Soundfonts of certain size.

DirectWave doesn't come with this limitation, and that's where the fix is. BUT it also preloads into memory the entire soundfont of your choice.

This means that you need plenty of memory if you are going to use large GM soundfonts, and you have to be very careful managing them, even if you have plenty of memory.

There is a nice fix within DirectWave, which is an utility that does wonders for soundfonts btw, and it is that you can convert any melodic preset from a large soundfont into a DirectWave compatible format saving that preset in particular with DirectWave.

Say you like the piano of Crisis 3.0 or Musyng. You load Crisis 3.0 or Musyng into DirectWave and select the piano, then with it selected go to the "Open" option and then "Save program As".

DirectWave will save that piano melodic preset with a .DWP extension and will always be there every time you launch DirectWave for ease of use.

So select your favourite presets, save them, and you might not need to load the entire soundfont into memory anymore!