Hi,
may have found a solution for auditioning my numerous banks of soundfonts & styles.
I have a number of gm soundfont banks.
There's a mix of good & bad instruments in all of them.
I've been working on trying to put together my ideal soundfont for my omb styles ( xg )
& one for BIAB (gm)
To date I've actually been splitting them up into individual instruments & deleting any really poor ones & putting together a library.

I've now decided to try using Synthfont by creating a midifile of a BIAB or OMB style( only takes a minute or so).
Load it into Synthfont & audition the various soundfont banks on each of the tracks ( each track can have a different gm bank) and choose the best version of a particular instrument to put into my soundfont .
I've also had a look at the Viena soundfont editor. They make quite a good combination. http://www.synthfont.com/ ( donation requested)

For putting together my soundfont I'll probably use
Soundfont Librarian (free)
http://www.sf2midi.com/index.php?page=software

best wishes
Rikki

Hi Rikki

You know I was thinking as I was looking over the many different sites known to me with free soundfonts. Although I haven't gotten that far yet, it seems to me that it would be a great idea to have a site someplace where people could upload and share the best of the best. Maybe there is such a place already.

Has anyone found real good free soundfonts, enough so that one could have a soft arranger sound as good as say a PSR2000? This interests me for starts, but on the other hand if I jump in and go through a bunch of this and find only a bunch of junk, then....... Well, I suppose it would be great for learning.haha

Hi Scott,
I've got the following plus some.

I'm going thru & trying to pick the most suitable ones for my BIAB & OMB setup.

Everyone has different taste, but I'm happy to list some of my favourite sounds from each. Probably depends on the type of styles & music one plays.
I hope to be putting together an xg mapped drumset that I'll be happy to share when I finish it.


Two really good free ones are sgm128 & sgm180 http://www.geocities.jp/shansoundfont/

This site has sgm128 ( & lots of others) http://www.sf2midi.com/index.php?page=software

Commercial ones http://www.papelmedia.de/english/index.htm
( I've just upgraded to the above, let you know what I think)
http://www.reasonbanks.com/pvitamin.html
http://www.samplebanks.com/ordering.shtml

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Scott Langholff:
[B]Hi Rikki

Rikki:

This is very interesting. I would love to find another use for BIAB.

DOes this mean you are now creating yet ANOTHER new soundfont master file with the various soundfonts you have chosen and edited in BIAB from the individual ORIGINAL soundfont files? How does one compile the new file? Simply with a "save as" routine in Synthfont?

Hi Cajun,
basically what I've got is about 8
gm & xg soundfont banks consisting of the 128 gm voices plus gm/gs , xg drumsets.

Having gone thru the various banks, there's some good, some reasonable & some really poor voices..
Basically I haven't found a single gm/xg soundfont bank that I'm totally satisfied with. One may contain good piano's & have poor strings etc etc
I thought the best way to go about it would be to build up a custom soundfont.
One for OMB (xg mapped drums)
One for BIAB(gm2 mapped drums)
The problem with using psr .sty files with GM drum mapping is that in certain instances you get incorrect drums playing.
xg & gm/gs drum mapping differs .

I haven't found a satisfactory way of auditioning the fonts. Using them in BIAB, I can only load one gm soundfont at a time, so I have to listen to the song/style with the one font, be it sgm128 , sgm180, papalmedia etc doesn't make it easy to compare whether I should be using a papalmedia piano, with sgm180 strings & sgm128 drums.
Saving the BIAB song/style as a midifile, I can load it into Synthfont and listen to it using various soundfonts at the same time
ie I can use
papalmedia for piano, sgm180 strings & sgm128 drums or any mix of
In this way I can take note of which font has the best piano, which one has the best bass, strings etc
& then I can create my font accordingly.
Even though BIAB has 100's of styles I'm basing my choice of prefferable instruments on the styles I use the most.
The above would also apply to OMB (psr .sty files)
I'll do the 2 seperate fonts mainly because of the drum mapping.

For putting my custom soundfont together I'll can use
Soundfont Librarian (free) http://www.sf2midi.com/index.php?page=software
I have other choices, including Soundfaction Alive, my creative soundcard Vienna editor but I thought that since the Librarian is free, it may encourage someone else to give it a go.

Synthfont is available below, it's a full working version, (though a donation is asked for after evaluation to help him keep upgrading his software)
On the same site he has a soundfont editor called Viena. ( don't confuse Viena & creative's Vienna )The 2 programs actually work in conjunction. ie you're using synthfont & you want to edit the font, you just click the viena icon & it takes you to the editor. Edit , save & go back.
I'm not terribly familiar with this one, but as a freebie , it's brilliant.
One thing I was experimenting with the other night was editing the volumes of individual drums in a drumset ie brushes too loud so instead of having to alter the brush velocity in each of the styles, may be easier to alter the brush sample. Custom drums. http://www.synthfont.com/

It's amazing what can be done with soundfonts & for next to nothing.