

hardware synths, but almost nobody is using this hardware in 2015, as it doesn't integrate well in a modern music production environment. These SoundFonts should also work well on Audigy, etc. You can read more about this on my blog post: Using SoundFonts in 2016.ĭue to the lack of fully-compatible SoundFont players in popular plugin formats, most of my current SoundFonts are being developed for use with FluidSynth.
Professional soundfonts software#
(If you are running a desktop Linux distribution, you can use Calf Fluidsynth if your music software supports LV2 plugins.) I have tried every SoundFont-compatible VST/AU I can find, and there isn't a single one that supports the SoundFont 2.01 specifications. This means that you won't be able to easily use it in conjunction with popular recording software such as SONAR, Cubase, Logic, Mixcraft, et al. The only problem for many users is that FluidSynth does not exist as a VST/AU plugin, instead functioning as a General MIDI device. In some ways, it is even better than Creative/E-mu's own implementations. The lone exception that I am aware of is FluidSynth, which in my opinion is the best SoundFont software synth by far. Unfortunately, almost nothing else does, and this holds true in 2016. The Creative Audigy and later cards as well as the E-mu APS (and possibly others) follow this specification.
Professional soundfonts mod#
For example, you could now change how an instrument's loudness was affected by note-on velocity or map the mod wheel to control the lowpass filter cutoff. With this update, Creative/E-mu gave the SoundFont format the ability to map a MIDI input parameter to control any attribute of the instrument's sound. Over the years, updates were made to the SoundFont format, the most significant probably being the SoundFont 2.01 specifications. During the late '90s through the mid-2000s, many musicians would use SoundFonts in place of the expensive hardware samplers that were on the market at the time. Some of the early cards even had memory on-board in which to store the SoundFont's instrument samples. The sound generation was handled in hardware, as computer processors were not yet fast enough to handle the high-quality audio processing needed to produce a professional-sounding virtual instrument. E-mu also used the format in some of its pro-audio sound cards, such as the E-mu APS. SoundFont was the format used in Creative's Sound Blaster sound cards beginning with the Sound Blaster AWE32, and continuing through the Live!, Audigy, and X-Fi lines. The original SoundFont file format was developed in the early 1990s by E-mu Systems and Creative Labs, and it contains audio recordings of instrument sounds along with logic that determines how those samples get played. You can check out my virtual instruments by clicking on the links to the left. There are a number of standalone or plugin-based sampler programs that are compatible with SoundFont and/or SFZ sampler formats. The most common sampler file formats in use today are SoundFont, SFZ and Kontakt.Īll of the virtual instruments I have published on this site are in either SoundFont or SFZ format.

These files must be loaded into a compatible standalone or plugin-based virtual instrument known as a sampler. Sampler file format - Some instruments exist as a file (or collection of files) that adhere to a specific standard.Plugins are typically in VST format (Windows/Mac/Linux), AU format (Mac), or LV2 (Linux). Plugin - A virtual instrument that must be hosted inside a compatible music application.Standalone software - A virtual instrument that does not need to be hosted within any other music software.Virtual instruments are usually available as:

Some virtual instruments attempt to mimic acoustic instruments, while others go for a more synthetic sound. A virtual instrument is a piece of software that turns user input (usually via MIDI keyboard) into sound.
