Soundfonts

Hi All

I seem to remember seeing a thread very recently which included the url for the soundfont site (www.soundsite.net) and had a look at it.
Sorry if I am not with it but can anyone explain what a sound font is?

cheers
eddie

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Eddie from Rotherham
www.yamahakeyboards.info
all mail from this url is virus-free thanks to Norton Antivirus2002

Hi Eddy!

Sorry my English isn't so good but I'll try to explain.
A soundfont is a soundbank, it's a collection of 1 or more sound(s) (instruments) in 1 file.
You can compare it to your keyboards Wave ROM.
You can make (sample) your own soundfonts by using programs like Vienna Soundfont Studio, but you'll need a special soundcard from Creative (A Soundblaster Live! or Soundblaster Audigy/Audigy 2).
A soundfont can be GM compatible.
So if you have a Soundblaster Live! for instance, you can download soundfonts from the web and load them in your pc's memory.
You can download an entire new GM set from the web, there are a lot of different soundfonts and have different sizes, there are GM sets that are only 512 kb's, but there are GM soundfonts that are pretty huge, like Fluid3, it's 147 MB!!!.
Although I think most of the free soundfonts don't have high quality sounds, there a few good ones.
For instance the ProTrax Classical Guitar Soundfont is amazing (Sounds like the megavoices of the Tyros).
And Fluid 3 has a pretty good piano sound.
Here are some links:
www.soundblaster.com www.hammersound.net http://www.thesoundsite.net/


Greetz,
Marcel

Hi Marcel,

Many thanks for your knowledgeable reply.
You have given me enough to know now before venturing into the sound font world.
BTW your English is perfect!!
cheers
Eddie

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Eddie from Rotherham
www.yamahakeyboards.info
all mail from this url is virus-free thanks to Norton Antivirus2002

On the same subject....

Isn't the [PC?] ".dls" file Microsoft's version of a sound font?

I ask beacsue I have a Yamaha "DS-XG" YMF744 chipset PC soundcard (i.e. cheap). Yamaha have been suggesting for a while that this category of cards would support ".dls" sound files but I know so little about the subject I don't know wether this has actually happened, nor what sort of sound capabilities are available in this format anyhow...

Anyone got anything?

Ask Simon Williams at our PSR Styles/Songs forums about Sound Fonts. He knows all about them!

Bob