Soundfonts are like rotary telephones. Does anyone even use them anymore?

I used soundfonts for a time when I was searching for better sounds coming out of synths like TTS. Once I found sample players, I stopped using fonts. I look at fonts now as low quality samples. They very often are basic and while they sound better than a synth generated instrument, they pale in comparison to the nice 3rd party samplers on the market. I'm not knocking them as they were a very important part of my musical education with digital recorded music.

At the time, I used the smaller "free" SFZ player. It was a single channel player. I now have SFZ+ but seriously, I have never opened it. Not even to check it out. It was included with the DAW but along with several other things, I don't use them for how I work. I also found other that there were 2 different formats of SFZ files and not all of the files would work properly. Some didn't work at all. These issues caused me to start looking for a better way to do things.

To the point......You can load as many SFZ instances as the computer & software will support.

Regarding the output number vs the number of available channels.... rather than try to use one instance of SFZ to play 12 tracks, I would opt to have 2 instances with the 12 channels split among them. 8+4 or 6+6.... that way you have control of every track as needed.

my 2 cents

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.