Seriously... stop wasting your time with soundfonts and get the real synth. You're saving like 10, maybe 20 dollars at most for an illegal, vastly inferior product.

Romantique Tp wrote:

Seriously... stop wasting your time with soundfonts and get the real synth. You're saving like 10, maybe 20 dollars at most for an illegal, vastly inferior product.

Very occasionally a soundfont is more convenient for me than the real hardware, if the soundfont's samples are accurate. Other times, hardware is definitely better.

The site for the SF88 claims "Nothing sounds closer to the hardware synth," which is, well, marketing guff. And there is no way of knowing if the soundfont has mistakes in it...the formerly commercial $99.95 SONiVOX 250 MB soundfont had a few errors in it. 😵

Roland would probably send a cease and desist to the SF88 authors if/when they find out about it.

Its also in the playback hardware (midi processor) not only samples 😀

Hello,

I want to listen to midis (ie classic game music and other midis) in a hifi setting I have the jazman gm soundfont and a few others. For example you can download some very large piano soundfonts.

But for listening to midi GM and GS in a hifi settings can I really get better sound quality with a hardware module (even a very old one) than soundfonts libraries by spending up to about $200 - $300? If so what sort of modules would you/anyone suggest? I could spend more if there was something really amazing though.

PS. I'm very new to this but I want to get the best sound possible for listening to midis.

What I mean is does an old hardware module sound better in terms of sound quality, or is it more about liking the classic sound?
What about the 32khz limitation?

Which option will give me the best sound quality, if I don't mind if some instruments don't exactly match the original device it was written for/with?

A few days ago i bought the JazMan SF88 GM-GS Soundfont.
I did a little review and recorded the famous midi tunes passport.mid and canyon.mid with it:

This soundfont is pretty expensive (Little below 90 bucks), but i decided to buy it anyway. And i don't regret it one bit. Of course it has it faults, but 99% of the tunes you play with it sound just like the hardware. And that is a great accomplishment for a soundfont.
It was designed (Just as the JazMan GM 24 Bit Soundfont) by Arman Jazman. He is a musician, and worked at Creative and their pro line E-MU.
Compared to other Sound Canvas soundfonts, this one is just a whole other league.
Recommended 100% !

passport.mid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le8es_kpDOM&feature=youtu.be
canyon.mid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLL9k2BhZEg&feature=youtu.be

$89 (US) is a little out of budget with the Holidays here..

What are the "next best things" in soundfonts which can be had freely?

Oldbitcollector wrote:

$89 (US) is a little out of budget with the Holidays here..

What are the "next best things" in soundfonts which can be had freely?

Arachno SoundFont

http://www.arachnosoft.com/main/soundfont.php

Oldbitcollector wrote:

$89 (US) is a little out of budget with the Holidays here..

What are the "next best things" in soundfonts which can be had freely?

The 25 MB Roland SC-55 soundfont on this page: http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/1400/soundfonts

To Midi: Many people prefer the Sound Canvas modules because they were the first to incorporate the General Midi standard in a module. Also it's what most games are composed for.

Aside from the SF88 soundfont, the 25 MB one on the page above it the closest :p

deemster wrote:

The 25 MB Roland SC-55 soundfont on this page: http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/1400/soundfonts […]
Show full quote

Oldbitcollector wrote:

$89 (US) is a little out of budget with the Holidays here..

What are the "next best things" in soundfonts which can be had freely?

The 25 MB Roland SC-55 soundfont on this page: http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/1400/soundfonts

To Midi: Many people prefer the Sound Canvas modules because they were the first to incorporate the General Midi standard in a module. Also it's what most games are composed for.

Aside from the SF88 soundfont, the 25 MB one on the page above it the closest :p

Thanks for the tip. I like the SC-55 soundfont quite well with my AWE32 in a 98SE system.

If the SF88 soundfont is 1.6GB, it can't be used in a 98SE system, correct (because of the 512MB limit)?

Does anyone know what the limit of the sound cache on the Live! is? Is it half of your system memory, or it is a set amount?

I just want a soundfont that sounds close to Lee Jackson's grabbag recording. All the roland soundfonts i've heard don't sound like his SC-88, and that SF88 recording (judging from the Canyon.mid guitar and percussion) doesn't sound like it either. Thanks for recording that BTW

leileilol wrote:

I just want a soundfont that sounds close to Lee Jackson's grabbag recording. All the roland soundfonts i've heard don't sound like his SC-88, and that SF88 recording (judging from the Canyon.mid guitar and percussion) doesn't sound like it either. Thanks for recording that BTW

The one that was on the Atomic Edition CD? That sounds like it been ran through an effects processor of some kind. Delay + EQ probably, maybe per track tweaking. The full MIDI sounds much drier on my SC-8820 and M-GS64 (rackmount SC-88) than that recording does. Most notably, the drums sound far less punchy. The SC-88pro onwards have onboard effects processors, so it might be possible to augment the original MIDI files to sound more like that recording. I haven't tried it to be honest, so I don't know how close you can get. In any case, I think you're going to have a hard time finding a soundfont alone that will make the MIDI sound like that recording.

Is there a big difference between GM and GS If you are playing some GS midi files with a GM only soundfont (that does have GS drumkits)?

Midi wrote:

Is there a big difference between GM and GS If you are playing some GS midi files with a GM only soundfont (that does have GS drumkits)?

Depends, but given that the last version of GS had over 1600 sounds vs GM's 128, the difference can be massive.

Thanks do you know in a typical GS soundfont, how many of those extra instruments are new recordings or are any going to be the same recordings from the GM soundfont with effects applied?

Also is it correct that you can play xg files with a gs soundfont but not gs files with an xg soundfont?

For the Jazman GM soundfont it says 24-bit/48 khz sample rate but with the Jazman SF88 (GS) soundfont it says "CD Quaity / 24-Bit True Stereo Samples". Does anyone know if this means that the core 128 sounds are recorded with 24 bit depth but the extra gs ones are cd quality (16 bit) or if not how many are cd quality (16 bit) and how many are 24 bit? Can anyone who owns the soundfont and is knowledgeable about testing samples confirm?

Midi wrote:

Thanks do you know in a typical GS soundfont, how many of those extra instruments are new recordings or are any going to be the same recordings from the GM soundfont with effects applied?

No idea, I only really have experience with the actual hardware. If I were to guess, I'd assume from the wastefully large size of that soundfont that it's been created out of pretty long samples taken from actual hardware. The SC-55 and 88's sound maps contained variations that could I suppose could be simulated through effects processing. However, quite a lot of the sounds were unique, and this became especially true of the SC-88pro onwards. That's irrelevant when considering an SC-88 soundfont though.

Midi wrote:

Also is it correct that you can play xg files with a gs soundfont but not gs files with an xg soundfont?

Again I'm not familiar with the soundfonts, but on actual hardware it depended on the hardware, and there were caveats even then. AFAIK, real XG modules will respond to GS control changes and SYSEX but will sound quite different to actual Roland hardware, and the actual sound changed from model to model. On the other hand, Roland hardware didn't support unofficially support XG until the SC-88pro (due to the lack of DSP driven insert effects before then), but it sounded rather different to playback on actual Yamaha hardware. A soundfont is going to rely on two things: are both the XG and GS patches available in the soundfont, and will the soundfont+player respond correctly to all XG and GS specific SYSEX? I honestly don't know, but the Bassmidi driver, used for things like VirtualMidiSynth, certain supports at least the basic GS + XG effects parameters.