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I was just searching the web for sound fonts, and there are tons. Rather than wasting a bunch of time sorting through a truckload of sand to find the one grain that's good, I'm hoping that people here who use sound fonts will direct me to some good ones. Free is good. But, if there is a particularly realistic commercial set, I would want to know about that too.
If I go by the advertising hype, the're ALL the best... that's why I want to hear the thoughts of people who have actually used them.
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I started with the 12 meg Chaos soundfont, then replaced individual instruments by using the Vienna 2.1 soundfont software. This allowed building a custom GM soundfont set.
Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
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I used to use this one. Do a Google search
8Rock11e.sf2
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Quote:
I used to use this one. Do a Google search
8Rock11e.sf2
ALL of the hits I get for this filename lead to torrents which...
1) want me to sign up
2) keep redirecting me to other pages
3) present the information in ways that suggest what they are about to send me isn't what I want
However, in the process of searching for this, I found some other sound fonts that have really impressed me. I have a MIDI file of Prelude in G major which has always sounded so unrealistic I couldn't stand to play it all the way through... but one of these sound fonts has made it sound totally authentic, like its being played on an acoustic piano! My Roland hardware synth doesn't make the song sound NEARLY as good!
Apparently the downfall of sound fonts in the past has been ram... but now that large amounts of ram are possible, sound fonts and soft sounds of all kinds can be large enough to rival or exceed the samples in older hardware synths.
I will be spending more time looking at sound fonts and similar soft technologies
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Good free site http://soundfonts.homemusician.net/ also see the additional sites a the bottom. My favorite for paid fonts http://www.sonivoxmi.com/ very nice and instrument sets as well.
Lenovo Win 10 16 gig ram, Mac mini with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2022, Realband, Harrison Mixbus 32c version 9.1324, Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app, Komplete 49 key controller.
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Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
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Papelmedia has some nice free fonts. I've used them frequently in the past
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Papelmedia unfortunately went out of business. I have purchased their soundfont; my problem with them was they put too much reverb into them, which was great if you liked a lot of reverb; not so great otherwise. My favorite GM soundfont, which seems to becoming harder to find, is the "Reality 32MB GM/GS Soundfont". I noticed there seems to be a "New Reality Soundfont" out there, but I haven't tried it yet. I know Allanah's site used to carry it, but her site has moved and doesn't appear to be working at the new location [yet?].
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 2x2TB, 1x4TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 2x1.5TB, 2x2TB, 1x4TB SATA BB2024/UMC404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/MixBus/Notion/Finale/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com
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Thanks to everybody for the links. This is so much fun, I can't believe I managed to stay disinterested in sound fonts until now!
I'm already starting to see the advantage of collecting a few particularly good individual fonts as opposed to a bunch of GM collections... with individual instruments you can minimize the amount of ram you tie up.
I downloaded some really large GM sound fonts, which I'm hoping are good enough to justify the size (RealFont 2.1... 103,507 mb !)
Some of the individual instruments are as large as entire GM sets, which I hope means they are capable of reproducing more subtleties of the instrument than I can coax from a GM soft synth
I expect to find that they all have a few sounds I like and a lot that are not as good. Is it commonly done to extract a good instrument from a set and make it a standalone font?
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Pat, I used SFs exclusively for about two years, and had a huge collection. I even bought a few, and they were pretty good. I hardly ever use them now as i tired of handling them individually, and most i hated the players they were not as smooth and efficient as a good sampler.
Still there are a fwe really good sounding ones that are worth it.
Lenovo Win 10 16 gig ram, Mac mini with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2022, Realband, Harrison Mixbus 32c version 9.1324, Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app, Komplete 49 key controller.
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Quote:
Pat, I used SFs exclusively for about two years, and had a huge collection. I even bought a few, and they were pretty good. I hardly ever use them now as i tired of handling them individually, and most i hated the players they were not as smooth and efficient as a good sampler.
Still there are a fwe really good sounding ones that are worth it.
I'm having fun because learning new things is usually a blast... but I don't expect them to become my one stop sound source. I love real tracks. My hardware synth is very convenient and pretty good. But I see potential with the sound fonts too. I tried the same song with multiple sound sources, some were good, some not. In that scenario, it makes sense to have a variety of options when whatcha got doesn't work as well as you'd like.
Side note: I'm getting some interesting results with Cello by cloning the track and putting two different sound fonts on it... the nuances of each sample are different, and it seems to add variety to the sound
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Pat,
Seeing as you are gearing up to play live I'll offer a little advice. Don't use a software synth or SF player live with RTs. Use the soft synth or SF player to convert those MIDI tracks to audio tracks then delete the MIDI and unload the synths.
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Quote:
Pat,
Seeing as you are gearing up to play live I'll offer a little advice. Don't use a software synth or SF player live with RTs. Use the soft synth or SF player to convert those MIDI tracks to audio tracks then delete the MIDI and unload the synths.
exactly what I plan to do. I want to keep it simple and as foolproof as possible.
I originally intended to send all midi to audio for the final tracks, but when I started messing with the sonic maximizer/PA I was surprised to hear that the MIDI tracks sounded REALLY good through the PA.... no muddiness, the clarity of sound was like having musicians on stage playing. On the other hand, the audio tracks WERE somewhat muddy, even with the maximizer. It may be that I need to go back and change some EQ on the audio to isolate the frequencies a bit more... (and that's what I'll probably do)... but then, the hardware synth is pretty darn easy...
BTW, thanks for all the value you add to the forum. I always enjoy reading your posts. You are one of many very smart and seasoned BIAB/RB gurus in the forum, and you are a big help to many of us.
Last edited by Pat Marr; 08/23/11 04:17 AM.
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Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
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I have a huge SF2 collection that I don’t use much anymore however at times I do use one or two in a song. As you found out Pat the layering SF2s can yield some very impressive results. Be sure to pick up the free Soundfont Librarian With this you can mix and match your individual SF2s into different SF2 collections. I had my own GM set as well as sets containing only trumpets, or saxes, or synths or pianos, etc. This makes it easy to find your favorite SF2s. Good luck and have fun.
Me, it's not about how many times you fail, it's about how many times you get back up.
Cop, that's not how field sobriety tests work.
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Do you notice a common thread here, Pat? Everybody says how this or that SF is really good but they don't use them any more. The pertinent question is why? I think the answer is everybody has moved past SF's. They can sound good and all that but not very convenient. 6, 7 or 8 years ago good, portable USB sound modules didn't exist but they do now. I got a great deal on a used Sonic Cell a couple years ago for $400, the new Ketron SD2 is about the same and sounds great plus Sampletank has sales going on all the time, right now you can get the Sonicsynth package with something like 3,000 instruments for $200-300. If you take your music seriously that much cash is a pretty small investment and those things are simpler and easier to use than messing around with SF's and they sound better too.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Quote:
Do you notice a common thread here, Pat? Everybody says how this or that SF is really good but they don't use them any more.
Point taken, Jazz. I like having lots of options, but I also like to find and implement whatever is "best practice". When my Roland rack synth dies, I'll probably replace it with something like what you're talking about... either the latest greatest hardware synth or a very good commercial soft set of sounds.
But I have to wonder how many people fell out of love with soundfonts before a lot of ram was the norm. Whereas hardware has limits, there's theoretically no real limit on soft sound. Depending on how much work the author puts into it, soft sounds should be able to outperform anything else. Whether I'll find super-performing soft sounds for free is doubtful... but for now I'm content to learn how it works so I'm better prepared to use the next generation (when I learn what it is. )
And thanks to everybody for the links! This is some good stuff! It's like Christmas in August!
Last edited by Pat Marr; 08/23/11 03:53 PM.
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Pat don't waste your time. Get sampletank free, and the native instruments komplete player. Done. For extra credit get the freebie emu rompler as well.
Last edited by rockstar_not; 08/23/11 09:53 PM.
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Pat, having SF is just one more tool in the drawer. I did not stop using them cause they sounded bad, i stopped cause it was just much easier to choose from sampletank 2 as all the samples are in a list. I bought sampletank 2 in a group by for like $69 and it came with over 7 sets of samples. SO i just stopped digging thru folders of SFs.
There are a fwe that sounded real good, so there is no harm in digging around, and seeing for yourself. You might find a pile of go to's.
Lenovo Win 10 16 gig ram, Mac mini with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2022, Realband, Harrison Mixbus 32c version 9.1324, Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app, Komplete 49 key controller.
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Hey Pat and others, this new Plug in VSTi says it can use SFs, as well as waves, Aiff and some other things. Might be worth looking into. http://tx16wx.blogspot.com/
Last edited by Robh; 08/24/11 10:54 AM.
Lenovo Win 10 16 gig ram, Mac mini with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2022, Realband, Harrison Mixbus 32c version 9.1324, Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app, Komplete 49 key controller.
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