retardware wrote on 2021-10-22, 14:48:
I didn't find any information about how much soundblaster soundfont memory is being used by games that support it.
That's because generally games don't expect you to have any memory added into your AWE. They're using you card as a device to play General MIDI, but which GM soundfont you're using is up to you — it could be as large as 28MB. If you're not using anything, the card just uses its default soundfont stored in the ROM, so extra RAM is not required at all.
If you do want to use soundfonts, remember that with something like AWE32/AWE64 you'll be loading the soundfont into memory every time you boot into Windows, which is pretty slow. I found that even though I like something like Masterpiece, Chorium, Weeds and others, I don't like adding a minute or so to my boot time. Also, keep in mind that SF2 soundfonts are only useable in Windows 9x, not DOS 6.22 or Win3.x.
I think 8MB is kind of a sweet spot. I like Creative's default 8MBGMSFX.sf2 that comes on the AWE setup disk, honestly. I also think most of the soundfonts that were relevant for gamers in the 90s were actually SBKs and generally they are 4–8MB as well. I'm talking about stuff like Advent, Fantasy2, etc. Voice Crystal's SF2 is 4MB as well. So there's still some
Then again I think it's nice to be able to try bigger soundfonts at least once. 32MB FPM SIMM72 module certainly is more expensive than 8MB, but compared to the price of the card itself I think it's negligible.
