KVR Audio

salomoltres · Post by **salomoltres** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 7:28 am

New to this forum and to soundfonts/MIDI, but I've got the kinks out, except that the sondfonts I use don't sound that good. To clarify, One soundfont I downloaded had an audio sample of how it sounds, and mine is close, but still not very good. Also, when i try the soundfont in the keyboard portion of SB Live's AudioHQ panel, it sounds a little bit different than when I use my controller/keyboard. I'm thinking that it's my soundcard (I used my 4 year old SB Live card in my new Comp. so I could use soundfonts), but I want to make sure this is the problem and not my setup before I buy a new soundcard. I tried to search the forum for an answer, but there was over 1100 hits for soundfonts and I don't know how to phrase the problem correctly, so I appologize if this has been addressed before.

Specs:

P4 3.2 GHz w/ 2GB RAM
Using SONAR Home V. 4
also have Guitar Rig 2, MAudio Fast Track(comp. sees these as soundcards) as well as crappy REaltek AC'97 internal soundcard attached to the motherboard
SB Live! 5.1 (from a Dell)

Any Ideas?

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:25 am

Hi there, welcome to KVR!

Some demo MP3 files are not showing the soundfont on it's own, but could be processed with effects to make them sound nicer. For instance, reverb can be added, or a chorus effect or a compressor to fatten it up. They often show you how it could sound when polished

There are several ways to use soundfonts:
* Load them into the memory of your SB. Then the hardware of your SB is used to play them. This way you can't use extra plugin effects other than the reverb and chorus of the SB itself.
* Load them in a VST plugin that accepts SF2 files, like <SFZ>. With that you can use soundfonts on any soundcard, not only soundblasters. SFZ has extra options you don't have on the SB card, like playback quality settings. Higher quality sounds better (less aliasing noise) but uses more CPU power. And you can put any plugin VST effect on it you like.

Since your controller keyboard only sends midi info (which notes to play) I don't understand why it sounds different that way. Only one thing I can think of: velocity sensitivity. When entering notes with a mouse all notes are on the same velocity, so it lacks expressiveness.

The SB Live! is certainly not the best soundcard around, but since you've heard the demo through the same card that does not explain for the differences.

flugel45 · Post by **flugel45** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 6:06 am

BertKoor couldn't have said it better...

You've got a fast enough PC - dump the the SBLive (for SF playing), and downlaod the free sfz.

Soundfonts are just 16 bit samples; don't hold that against them - they can sound great. Of course, with a gajillion out there available, you're bound to find a few klunkers.

If you haven't already, check out the free soundfont thread at RGCAudio forum. If you can find the EMU Module Mania bundle (5 CDs - soundsets of their hardware sound modules) it's a great collection to be had for cheap, since everyone seems to want 24 bit kontakt or Giga samples these days, retailers in recent years have been blowing these out for what it would cost to get one small GIGA library.

And yes, hello, welcome to the forum!

JD

learjeff · Post by **learjeff** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 11:09 pm

Cheesy soundfonts sound cheesy. Great soundfonts sound great.

For a free one I like a lot (because I made it), try jRhodes3. It won't fit in the memory reserved for the Soundblaster unless you know the tweak, so try it with sfz. (Sorry, I don't know the tweak but someone here will if you need it: getting a soundblaster to play multimegabyte soundfonts.)

learjeff · Post by **learjeff** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 11:14 pm

IMHO, 24 bits is not necessary for a great soundfont -- it's just another example of "more must be better". Also, soundfonts now do support 24-bit samples, though you won't find many.

DUG FIR · Post by **DUG FIR** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:04 pm

learjeff wrote:Cheesy soundfonts sound cheesy. Great soundfonts sound great.

exactly. some are amazing. some are terrible. but even terrible ones can be fun!

Polite Company · Post by **Polite Company** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 3:09 pm

some are amazing. some are terrible. but even terrible ones can be fun!

Very true. I have a few 'bad' ones, the quality's not bad but the instruments are. One sounds like an irritable accordian and the other is a toy piano. I don't use them a lot but sometimes they are just what you need

MattmaN · Post by **MattmaN** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 6:31 pm

I think alot of newbies are missing the boat with soundfonts nowadays, and opt for expensive vsti's like hypersonic.
No knock against these great vsti's at all, but to totally ignore all the great free sounds out there in order to jump in head first with your wallet is not nessisary.
I see alot of newbs on messege boards say stuff like "I just bought SX3, Hypersonic, recycle, reason, wavelab, and NI complete...where do I start?"
There is so much that can be done with quality sounfonts without having to dump a bunch of cash on expensive rompler vsti's that you may, or may not need.

flugel45 · Post by **flugel45** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 7:09 pm

MattmaN wrote:I think alot of newbies are missing the boat with soundfonts nowadays, and opt for expensive vsti's like hypersonic.
No knock against these great vsti's at all, but to totally ignore all the great free sounds out there in order to jump in head first with your wallet is not nessisary.
I see alot of newbs on messege boards say stuff like "I just bought SX3, Hypersonic, recycle, reason, wavelab, and NI complete...where do I start?"
There is so much that can be done with quality sounfonts without having to dump a bunch of cash on expensive rompler vsti's that you may, or may not need.

Right on the money.

Another point is that a lot of newbs are getting these highend VSTs as warez. With soundfonts, there's no need to go that route. sfz (arguably the best player, other than sfz+) wasn't available when I started. I bought - for a reasonable price - the Jeskola XS-1, which I'd put at a close second to sfz. Though I use sfz+ now, I still fire up the XS-1 now and again for nostalgia's sake.

So, noobs, listen up (especially if you don't know what midi is!

). Dump the warez, get youself sfz and some free quality SFs, and learn about VSTs the right (and legal) way!

JD

salomoltres · Post by **salomoltres** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:32 am

Thanks for the rplies guys! I spent a lot of time going through the soundfont topic, although it seems at least half those links are dead outside of the ones that I've already visited.

I tried SFZ and it seems to have some sort of conflict with Guitar Rig 2 and/or Sonar.

learjeff, I download your SF and loaded it no problem, but I'm actually having a problem like you said, having a 500+MB SF that won't load, so I need to find that tweak since SFZ won't work for me.

flugel45, I'd like to get that 5 CD bundle if it's worth buying, anyone else use this bundle before?

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:01 pm

Somewhere in SFZ there's an option "dfd" meaning Direct From Disk. This is for extremely large soundfonts that don't fit in memory.

hcv242 · Post by **hcv242** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:16 pm

ive seen this kind of talk before..... "soundfonts sounds bad" ... soundfont is just a format... it sounds as the quality of the recording, sounds....if its a good recording, it sounds good.....if its a bad one, it sounds bad...
to me the only bad thing about soundfont is that its 2 mono wav instead of one stereo....

learjeff · Post by **learjeff** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:00 am

Salomoltres, if you're using a Soundblaster or Audigy card, there's a tweak and you should google or else just post a new topic asking how to overcome the memory limitation -- it's real easy but the site I learned that from is gone (hammersound.net is dead).

If you're using sfz, you should have enough memory with 500M, but be sure to reboot your system just before starting the host program. Try the looped version which takes less memory. And try the DFD mode -- however, that never seems to work well on my laptop.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 12:32 am

salomoltres wrote: flugel45, I'd like to get that 5 CD bundle if it's worth buying, anyone else use this bundle before?

i own the bundle. it's a great starter kit. you should realize the samples are low res though, so it wont sound pristine like hardware samplers would (i imagine)... but they are a great start and are a good deal. all the loop points are there, and the sheer number of sounds avail. are awesome. they happily run with sfz as the largest file is 13megs (the orbit dance planet one)...

sfz with sfzbuddy (helps with buddy to add/adjust built in verb/chorus and such) and the module mania bundle is a good way to get into it.

Soundfonts sound Cheesy?