First post, by dnewhous
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Short answer: Synergi GS. Even if I were trying to use an XG soundfont with Final Fantasy VII, I'd still use this soundfont.
Now, an assessment of the competition:
Edgesounds - 24 bit GM soundfont. This thing sounds terrible. Don't consider it in your wildest dreams. They have another soundfont with an XG bank in it but the GM soundfont sounds so bad I wouldn't even consider it.
Sonivox GS 250 - Too large for older cards. The electric guitar sounds are better than the Synergi GS, but not enough better to justify the price or the huge size of the file. The classical instrument sounds are inferior!
Papelmedia GM - A good site to test out your soundfont's classical instrument sounds. The electric guitar sounds are dreadful and too loud on this soundfont, but the classical instruments are positively audiophile grade. At 260 MB this is an awfully large file for a strictly GM bank. The price is low and the Synergi soundfont is small enough that you can load this soundfont after the Synergi GS soundfont and this soundfont will override all of the GM sounds.
note: You can not load the Papelmedia GM and Sonivox 250 GS as the same time on a X-fi.
Soundfonts not tried:
E-MU Proteus 2000 from Digital Sound Factor. Supposedly a replication of what's on some old hardware. The demo sounds okay. But it isn't clear this is balanced for GS.
Big Fish Audio Soundfont Toolbox - contains a 24 MB GM bank. Product looks unremarkable.
Soundfont editing:
I do have Vienna 2.4 on my machine - but I don't see an easy way to move banks or patches from one soundfont to another. It looks like you have to extract the samples to wav and then reconstruct the polyphony in the new soundfont.
