As a new bee to the keys and SF I have gathered a lot of info from you folks. With my SB PCI512 I have had my "personal" SF (158mb) loaded with no problems. I used the E-Mu Soundfont Librarian to create the SF (a simple "cut & paste WP operation), then loaded it into Vennia to clean it up. Really low tech after reading everyones posts, but it worked. Keep up the great posts, and I'll keep learning!

1) I connect my Roland to the computer using MIDI cabels.
2) MIDI in, I believe has only 1 option, the SB card MIDI in port
3) MIDI out: SB live synth A, SB live synth B, Microsoft wave table, joystick port. I will have to check this weekend to see if there are others.
4) Where did you find the file that sounds like your Clavinova? Wow!! What a find.
5) Will check out "Synthfont"
6) I am not sure how much memory I have, but it is at least 512mb, will check this out this weekend.
7) My MIDI out ports looks very similar to this. http://www.1manband.nl/tutorials2/setting.htm
I put a period after it that's why it didn't work.
Starkeeper

[This message has been edited by Starkeeper (edited 04-14-2005).]

I thought Rikki and I were the only ones going back and forth on this thread, but there are others reading and garnering the good information posted here.
Starkeeper

Yes, there are others watching Starkeeper!
Thanks for the lessons, all of you!

Hi Smurf,
ok, you've sparked my interest with your comment on being able to load a 158mb font.
I decided to try my sblive value ? card in the desktop, just to see how large a font I could load. (I was under the mistaken impression the sb live card would only load smaller fonts ie 40 or so mb's. I don't use my desktop for music, just my laptop)
Under options, my Static Caching goes up to 191.50 mb maximum. My desktop only has 384mb of memory.
I managed to load the 128sgm font and play a midifile ( in powertracks pro). I couldn't try my larger font's as they are over 200mb and I couldn't load them into Audio HQ.

I did manage to play the same midifile with a font that was over 200mb in Synthfont .

Just interested to know how much memory you have in your computer, and what's the maximum Static Caching your computer shows.
Be intersting to know whether with more memory, whether the Static Caching goes up. I don't know a great deal about the actual workings of a computer, so it's interesting to learn.


Best Wishes
Rikki


[QUOTE]Originally posted by Smurf:
[B]

[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 04-17-2005).]

Hi Starkeeper,
I think wherever I mentioned I use USB setting, you would use the setting for your joystick device.
As for the Clav Pianofont, bear in mind my Clavinova has a really amazing speaker system. When listenig to a midifile played back via the font , it sounded great. Playing the font live via the clav as a controller, the overall feel was not as good as playing the Clav's internal piano sound. Bit hard to explain what I mean.

Strangely enough, I auditioned about 10 to 15 soundfont piano's ranging in size from well under 1mb up to 180mb's. I'm try to find a piano that works well with my psr piano based styles, (style parts not melody parts) and amazingly the one I thought sounded best with the few styles I tested, was the clavinova 2 sound (23mb).
So, I've come to the conclusion, it's not necessarily the size of the font, but the actual sounds and how well they blend together in a style.
Anyway, it's reinforced that the best way for me to go is build up the font from scratch, ( mix n'match ) by auditioning which instruments sound best for the styles I use, rather than just using one of the gm xg fonts as is.

Next I'm going to try and settle on a drum font.

Clavinova Font.
http://www.guraydere.com/soundfonts/sfdetails.aspx?kat=1

best wishes
rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Starkeeper:
[B] 1

Hey rikkisbears,
I started with 380 and a Christmas present put me up to 640. This is in a P3 700 running a SB PCI512 card. The cache increased as the memory did, it can use up to half of the installed memory. The only time I had a problem was when I was editing the SF, if I went to fast auditioning the sounds I BSOD in Win2000, a RARE occurrence for me on this system.

I used the AudioHQ that cam with the card until I switched to the kx Project drivers, and they load SF with no problems.

I also have been finding out that SF size don't matter. I am creating a new one for my next set of songs, using the SB 2meg one and ripping it apart. My better half bought me a 6 CD set of SF of ebay and I have not found one that totally sucks yet.

As for drum SF (a drummer of 30+ years here) the best ones I found that are free are, in order...

Gold Drums (rock, blues) a nice balanced set

ns_kit - I think a good general one

Rough Rider and Easy Rider - for a real raw, live sound, no toms tho!

I also like the ns_jbass, and a Yamaha Bright Piano that was on one of the cd's I have.

Please remember that this is MY ears talking, you might think they all stink!

For a listen to it visit one of these sites.....
http://www.mp3.com.au/TheJCSProject/ http://www.soundclick.com/thejcsproject

60% of the tracks are the SF loaded in the SB and using OMB 7.1 to play it. Keep up the great posts folks, and I really need to get a copy of that SFZ program and try to use it.

[This message has been edited by Smurf (edited 04-15-2005).]

For those who are interested in a good quality GM wavetable take a look at this:
http://www.soundsonline.com/sophtml/details.phtml?sku=EW-164

I might make the investment!!! In general, the larger the size (MB or GB) of the instruments the higher the quality (no looping, samples at various velocities, release samples, etc.). Yes, and there is more that goes into quality acoustic instrument samples (quality of the audio/recording equipment, effects, quality of the acoustic instruments used for sampling, mics and so on). Also if the engineers and muscians are dead from the belly button both ways then nothing will save the day - the instruments can be large but still sound bad.

In general, you get what you pay for but there are very many good quality soundfonts - for free. That's not a bad deal!!!

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 04-15-2005).]

Hi Smurf,
thank you. I had a feeling that might be the case.
I might be wise to keep the font I hope to create round 200mb's on my laptop (which is a 512mb).
Must admit I had no problems with a 200mb font, but when I loaded a 300mb font I ended up with a few hiccups.

Thank you also for some of the font suggestions.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Smurf:
[B]Hey rikkisbears,
IThe cache increased as the memory did, it can use up to half of the installed memory.

Hi Frank,
that's pretty impressive.

The larger good quality fonts do sound better, but I'm wondering if they are neccesary for a style?
As I mentioned above, I tried numerous piano's large & small in a few of my piano based styles, and strangely enough the 23mb ( freebie) piano , sounded better
than far larger fonts including some commercial fonts. On the other hand, trying to use it as a melody voice, left a bit to be desired.

I think for me it's going to be a case of putting together my favourite styles and then finding the sounds that blend best.

best wishes
Rikki


[QUOTE]Originally posted by Frank L. Rosenthal: