Soundfonts are easy to find and there is a ton of them around. Big ones, small ones, free fonts and paid fonts.
I decided to make a YT video to compare them using a MIDI file from Band in a Box.
(Communicating with Synthfont from BIAB is glitchy, even when using Loop.be or Springbeats or the likes, so I preferred a MIDI file. Loopbe and Kontakt works fine, no problems there.)
I didn't pay attention to the ability to play pop, rock of country. Only Jazz and the ability to make acoustic instruments sound good.
Njoy
BTW: If you view it on Youtube, you can easily find the snippets in the description, you can go from soundfont to soundfont if you like, using timestamps.
BTW2: Spoiler alert: imo, soundfonts are no match for Kontakt Libraries or even todays' cheaper keyboards (Korg Kross, Yamaha PSR)

Right. Low cost or free ain't gonna cut it for midi sounds. You see it all the time on this site because so many nooby's are attracted to Biab and for good reason. As long as they're using RT's everybody's happy but get to midi and it's like WOAH, what happened to the sound quality?

Midi is complex and hard to understand and then to keep it simple with Biab you have to find a GM synth with high quality sounds. There are a few "decent" ones but then define "decent". So now, you pay hundreds (thousands in some cases) for high end softsynth libraries because once you get into this you need more than one. There are specialist horns, drums, guitars and whatever else libraries. And, they must be manually selected and tweaked for the best sound with Biab and the nooby's go What, there must be a better way! And there it goes, 'round and 'round. There is no better way, great midi sound requires work and knowledge on the users part and that's it. It's not just select the synth and hit Play.

If we had a buck for every thread on this forum titled "How do I get better midi sounds" We'd all be rich.

Bob

I agree 100%.

I started on the midi path because back then, literally, it was all that was available to most players. If you didn't play an instrument but you could manage to play a few notes on a midi keyboard, you could emulate any instrument. Problem was, like Bob said, the quality of the sound sources were dismal. I had a huge library of the latest free fonts and sounds and nothing sounded real.

I went from the integrated default GM synths to the free fonts...a step up..... to the paid for libraries and well recorded samples. Pretty costly but they did sound really good. Still not real, mainly due to the lack of articulations. PG and it's real tracks solved that problem. Now days, generally, the only midi instruments I use are Bass Guitar, Piano, and drums.

When I built my DAW computer many years ago, I decided to leave all the free stuff and junk in the old laptop. Now, I mostly only use PG real tracks with an occasional smattering of midi for the parts I need that can only be done with midi.

Couldn’t agree more with you both...

In the midi department, there are such great libraries. How can anything top the Abbey Road drums, or the Vintage D piano, the Pearl piano from Impact Soundworks, the Fluffy audio Upright bass, the Native instruments Vintage Organ?

The comparison between midi and realstyles is not an easy one. For me, I go with MIDI for the sake of almost limitless sound-tweaking and the possibility to alter playing styles, feels, note choices, accents, dynamics that only midi offers.

Typical example for me is Organ (Hammond B3) tracks. With midi I can still change the drawbar settings, the percussion. Same with drums, I like a high pitched snare better than the typical low pitched studio snares. or I prefer smaller rides or smaller bass drums than most...

Exactly the same reasons I use MIDI over RTs.

Thank you for the informative post on this topic. Suppose I have a RT style such as piano, bass, drums, and I'd like to add strings to a chorus. Can someone point me in the right direction for being able to do that? Would I need to use a soundfont in BIAB for the strings? And how does a MIDI instrument get added to a RT song?

Band-in-a-Box includes a small selection of MIDI SuperTrack Strings played by Miles Black. These patches are MIDI soundfonts that Band-in-a-Box can load without having the user having to install and load a soundfont synth player.

While there are multiple ways to change instruments the method I use much of the time is to:

Right click on the existing name of an instrument in the mixer.
Click on the "Select MIDI SuperTRack for this track [] ..."
Select a "Strings" instrument from the list.

Serious flashback to 1993 just now….

Band-in-a-Box also has some string quartet as well as the individual instrument RealTracks.

In the RealTracks Picker enter "string" in the filter textbox and then press Update.

Don't forget to press the "Show All" button the next time you open the RealTracks Picker to clear the filter.

Have reviewed two new soundfonts and made my own (open source…)