KVR Audio

hyperborea · Post by **hyperborea** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 9:12 am

Hi guys,

I'm new to the Soundfont experience and love what I found so far. Got the SFZ player. My question is, could someone guide me to Soundfonts of a warm and rich Grand Piano? The kind they use in classical concerts.

Thanks for helping out.

P.S. What does the extension "sf2pack" and "sf Ark" mean and how can I play them with SFZ?

krushing · Post by **krushing** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 10:08 am

The Splendid Grand is probably one of the best freebie pianos.

SFPack and SFArk are simply compression formats (like a .zip file) specifically for SoundFonts; you just need to unpack 'em with the respective programs (SFPack & SFArk).

hyperborea · Post by **hyperborea** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 10:26 am

Thanks Krushing for your quick response! Splendid sounds great!

Alde · Post by **Alde** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 10:26 pm

You're absolutely right!
Splendid really is worth of it's name.

bro. miles · Post by **bro. miles** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 1:39 pm

Come on over to www.sf2midi.com and try some of the many pianos there. You will find many good ones to choose from. In the last few months there have been several great ones uploaded, and they are all free.

bro. miles · Post by **bro. miles** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 1:41 pm

Forgot to mention you can also find SFPack soundfont compression tool there free also.

hyperborea · Post by **hyperborea** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 4:09 pm

Thanks for the info Bro.miles. Will take a look. Happy New Year

paulmerchant · Post by **paulmerchant** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 4:56 pm

I haven't tried Splendid Grand (I'm downloading it right now). However, I recently tried to replace a soundfont called Steinbow that you can still find over at http://hammersound.net. Instead of replacing it, I fell back in love with the sound. Steinbow has a few imperfections, but to me they are part of the charm.[/url]

RobD · Post by **RobD** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 5:19 pm

I haven't started using soundfonts yet, I've mostly stuck to vst samplers/instruments etc. How reliable are they for live use (i.e on stage) exactly? And how much memory/CPU power do they eat?

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 5:56 pm

I've learned to grab any big soundfont immediately when I first hear of it, because they have a tendency to disappear. I can't count the number of times I've read discussions about how great a soundfont is, only to find that it's not available for download anywhere.

bro. miles · Post by **bro. miles** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:05 pm

Soundfonts are just an open format for sampling developed by EMU and sold to Creative Labs, who made it public.

If you are using Cubase or a sequnecer that supports VST, get the free sfz player form www.rgcaudio.com or the deluxe version which is even better. Both work great with little overhead on a modern computer. The amount of RAM used will depend entirely on the size of the samplesets you load.

Soundfonts are made with standard .wav samples so anything that can be sampled can become a soundfont. Since they are often made by musicians the quality can be great or poor. The soundfont spec itself is quite good enough for music production - typically 48KHz 16 bit samples are used, which is about as good as a standard audio CD.

It is the most widely used format, although it is about 10 years old so no longer the 'latest and greatest', but totally usable. Plus, there are a ton of free soundfonts on the net.

RobD · Post by **RobD** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:12 pm

I have Halion which supports soundfonts, I was just curious how'd it cope live. Thanks

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:21 pm

RobD wrote:I have Halion which supports soundfonts, I was just curious how'd it cope live. Thanks

What is the use of a vst instrument that won't function live?

hollowsun · Post by **hollowsun** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 2:55 am

james0tucson wrote:I've learned to grab any big soundfont immediately when I first hear of it, because they have a tendency to disappear. I can't count the number of times I've read discussions about how great a soundfont is, only to find that it's not available for download anywhere.

Yeah.... that's coz a lot of them are totally illegal and contravene copyright!

Steve

gunnare · Post by **gunnare** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:07 am

I have Halion which supports soundfonts, I was just curious how'd it cope live. Thanks

Your problem will not be soundfonts but the Halion sound engine. I think it is not the most stable around. The free sfz is much more reliable. I have used it at 5 conserts, and it is stable as a rock, with no CPU spikes. (Its the CPU spikes that often causes crashes live). Some of the stability comes from the low CPU-load.

Grand Piano soundfonts