Soundfont

[eilamgross]

How come nobody here can explain to me why sound fonts sound with lower quality than Giga samples.
They have a hiss.
Is something wrong with the way I import them into GIga or is it a basic feature, lower quality?

[LHong]

The Sounfont2 importer in Giga-Editor is lousy, it doesn\'t map correctly the filter/envelop/etc parameter. Perhaps no one cares much since he knows that the Giga will run best in the giga-sample format and you got what you paid.

The soundfont grand-piano is about 2MB with only 2 layers @ 12~20Khz-mono source (also very short sample time), while the gigapiano sample is 1GB-sample with about 16 layers @44.1khz stereo source. There wouldn\'t be further comparison could be made necessarily.
When you already had piano in gig format, why you still need the soundfont? You just simply can not have all features and functionalities on any other sample formats (included Akai).

Of course, when you still want the soundfont library on the GigaStudio, you better invest into other translator programs. That\'s all.

[This message has been edited by LHong (edited 10-18-2001).]

[Lance_M]

One option, just keep one of your ports through the sequencer set for the soundfonts, instead of all of them using GStudio.

[Chadwick]

Soundfonts don\'t HAVE to be low qualtiy, but historical PC development dictates that many are.

When the soundfont format for PC soundblaster type cards was developed, every sample had to fit into the card\'s onboard ram. Many of these cards had a maximum ram allocation of about 2-4mb. Consider the fact that a single piano note sample can last twenty seconds or so which adds up to 4 or 5 meg alone!

It\'s simply not possible to fit a number of sounds into that small an amount of ram without compromising. Soundfont manufacturers did one or several of the following in order to \'fit\' a set of sounds in:

1. Use extremely short samples with very short loops early into the sound. Your 5 mb piano note doesn\'t sound as rich after the initial attack, but that might be covered by other instruments in an ensemble. Now you\'ve cut the sound down to about 1mb.

2. Map no more than one or two samples to the whole sound. Instead of 1.5 GIG of samples, you\'ve cut way back to 1 or 2 mb (if looped).

3. Take fewer samples of the sound per second. ie instead of 96 or 48 thousand samples per second, going down to 11,000. The highest useable frequency in a sample is usually regarded as about half the sampling frequency. Sample at 4khz/s and you have a maximum top end of 2khz. As you go lower n sampling rates, top end noise and distortion appear and the soundcard needs to filter that out selectively. Instead of using 1mb at 48khz, you use 250kb at 11khz.

4. Lower the bit rate of the recording - this affects the dynamic range of the sample. Whereas manufacturers are currently talking about the advantages of 24bit Vs 16bit recording, some soundfonts are recorded at very low bit rates, which can give a sound quite a \'grungy\' timbre.
Instead of 250kb using 16bit recording, you can cut the sound down to 125khz at 8bit.

The final piano sound you have is not going to compete with the Gigapiano, even if you started with the same samples.

Having said all that, in the last couple of years Creative and others have opened up the ability of soundcards to access system ram, rather than just soundcard ram, and the limitations on soundcard developers have eased up quite a bit. Theoretically, there\'s nothing stopping someone making massive high quality libraries in soundfont format, but you must remember that soundfonts started life as a way to go \'beep\' or play nice big explosions in video games - it may not be most developers IDEAL format to aim for.

[This message has been edited by Chadwick (edited 10-18-2001).]

[eilamgross]

Where else can I get Protheus sounds?
Some are great and they do not exist in GIga!
And the reason why I need a translator is because there is no other way for me to play soundfonts but Giga.
I use Cubase with Aark 24 card.
Eilam

[LHong]

>>>Where else can I get Protheus sounds?
Some are great and they do not exist in GIga!<<<
Try the GM100/500 giga-sample, about $100 deal, it has similar 128 sounds + drumset. The Proteus soundfont sample is not even getting close to it!



[This message has been edited by LHong (edited 10-18-2001).]

[KingIdiot]

I have a feeling htat those banks are just the original Waveforms inside the proteus and the virtuoso. They dont have all teh cool filters and effects that are added ontop of them. but thats jsut a guess.I haven\'t heard the soundfont banks.


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Really...I am an Idiot

[Haydn]

I have some soundfonts EMU put out a couple years ago that cost me $20 for the disc. It had most of the sounds from the Proteus 2. I did an A-B comparison between my Proteus 2 module and these soundfonts and they were identical in quality even played through a Soundblaster Live. Maybe just a little extra hiss on the Soundblaster. I noticed that many of these sounds did not convert properly in GigaStudio and I gave up because of all the new sounds that came out. I still use a few sounds on Giga that converted properly - these are mostly pipe organ and orchestral percussion sounds. So it is possible to get decent sounding Soundfonts.

[clueless]

I have made it a sort of \"hobby\" collecting free SF2 files over the last year or so. They are hiding out at many sites. Many of the sounds out there are useless trash but some are very useable gems. I now have well over a gigabite of from-the-net SF2 files. As far as I can tell, they are all legal.

I use Chicken Systems Translator to convert the files to gig. The Giga editor does not do as good a job as Chicken System.

clueless

[eilamgross]

Thanks guys for all the answers.
The conclusion is clear
One needs the Chicken tranlator ...
Eilam

[Analoguesque]

I just have to add my $0.02c here. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

Anyone who says SoundFonts are low quality might as well be saying that cars are slow. Not all cars are slow. Not all SoundFonts are low quality.

However, the SoundFont standard was laid bare to all and sundry, which meant that many users with little experience had access to the format. Thus when you download SoundFonts from the web, many of them will be low quality, but there certainly are some gems out there.

Also, I disagree that you have to have really huge SoundFonts for them to sound good. This depends on several factors:

1. Designer Quality. A bad sound design using 64Mb of samples still churns out a bad SoundFont, so Big <> Good Quality every time. I\'m sure many have found this out the hard way .... download any bad 64Mb SoundFonts on a 56k modem? I know I have. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/mad.gif I bad designer can make the best samples sound bad! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/frown.gif

2. What instruments you are trying to create. If you\'re attempting to recreate acoustic instruments, then a good designer will need big samples for realism. In this case, Big = Good Quality because it allows the designer to keep more of the original sound, instead of relying on the synth to cover up inadequacies.

If you\'re designing analog SoundFonts, you can get away with very, VERY small samples if you\'re willing to use the SoundFont standard to recreate the sound instead of a polaroid snapshot of an original anlog synth. This would be something like the Analog-Digital hybrid synths (Alpha Juno, ESQ-1, SQ-80, K3, DW8000) did, using sampled oscillators (DCO\'s) as the basis of analog sound.

This is in fact what we do in our designs. We generate hundreds of top quality waveforms for use as oscillators, and then use the SoundFont standard to recreate and emulate analog synths. It allows you to recreate the nuances present in analog synths due to the interaction of the oscillators, LFO\'s ... etc. It allows for extremely expressive sounds that fit into very tight spaces.

It all depends on what you want to do with SoundFonts, and how much time you spend doing it. We spend a lot of time on our sound banks because the process we use is pretty intensive. The results are, however, very much worth the effort. Even Eiffel 65 used one of our old crappy (crappy by current standards) freeware SoundFonts on their Europop album, so it can\'t be that bad. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/grin.gif

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Ian
Analoguesque Sound Designs http://www.analoguesque.com (\"http://www.analoguesque.com\")

[This message has been edited by Analoguesque (edited 03-04-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Analoguesque (edited 03-04-2002).]

[Maximus]

Hi Folks:

Speaking of soundfonts, these past 6 months, I have scoured the web for the best orchestral instrument sf2s I could find. I have been using these types of samples for rudimentary symphonic sequencing.

Alas, my GigaStudio \"Studio\" is just a dream for now. So, of course, I\'m very envious of all of you here.

Nevertheless, I have now built a prolific soundfont bank from my collection of sf2 orchestral gems. I have made this freely available to anyone who is interested, since it was compiled from free soundfonts to begin with.


Location: http://www.thesoundsite.net/sf_c_dirlist.tml (\"http://www.thesoundsite.net/sf_c_dirlist.tml\")

Name of file:
Instruments_S_J_Orchestral_GM.sfpack

Size:
32mb in sfpack format; 72mb uncompressed.

Sfpack utility can be downloaded from here: http://www.soundtrackers.de/archives/sfpack.zip (\"http://www.soundtrackers.de/archives/sfpack.zip\")

The download site is very slow, so please be patient. The soundfont bank will be
available on the Hybrid soundfont site soon.

Compatiblity:
Sf2 tested on the PC with these software samplers: Livesynth Pro, Vsampler, Halion, EXSP24, and Fruity Soundfont Player. Fonts were compiled/edited using Audio Compositor.

Description:
A collection of winds, horns, concert piano, strings and other misc orchestral instruments, using for the most part standard GM protocol for numbering of instruments. GM numbers 100 and above contain string ensembles instruments
and solo string articulations.

Here is a 30 second mp3 example of the SJ_Orchestral soundfont at work....various strings and some woodwinds. Mixed down with a dash of reverb and eq:
http://www.mindspring.com/~simonl/LakeCalm-Excerpt.mp3 (\"http://www.mindspring.com/~simonl/LakeCalm-Excerpt.mp3\")

Perhaps there is something you can glean from this free collection.

Cheers,

Max
sjmedia@mindspring.com