SoundFont

Soundfonts contain samples and settings (for example, relative volume, envelope, filter settings ) for the description of sounds (english patches) in electronic MIDI device that by means of appropriate software ( software sampler ) or hardware (sound cards) can be used.

The SoundFont format was developed by the company E- MU Systems / Ensoniq to improve the older DLS format.

Among the various types of sound synthesis, the generation of sounds with sound fonts for wavetable synthesis part (see computer music).

  • 3.1 commercial synthesizer
  • 3.2 free / Free Synthesizer
  • 3.3 Utilities

Specification

The current SoundFont specification is version 2.04. Since version 2.0 Creative Labs promotes the active format as an open standard, which means that everyone is free to develop solutions that support the format.

The file structure of SoundFont files is a derivative of RIFF standards. A detailed description of the construction of a sound font file is beyond the scope of this article, therefore, at this point on the sound font specification in Version 2.01 (PDF, 264 kB) referenced.

History

Vienna SoundFont Studio is available in the same year. This makes it possible for anyone to create their own sound fonts.

Hardware for sound fonts

SoundFont synthesizer in hardware are characterized in that they do not cause CPU load for a practical, and provide an output of high quality on the other. Moreover, the below mentioned sound cards also allow effects models with their digital signal processors such as reverb, chorus, flanger, pitch shifter, equalizer, and more.

There are a number of sound cards from Creative Labs, which bring a SoundFont synthesizer hardware. These mainly include the Sound Blaster cards:

  • Sound Blaster AWE 32/64
  • Sound Blaster PCI512
  • Sound Blaster Live! series
  • Sound Blaster Audigy series
  • Sound Blaster X-Fi series

Limits of usable memory in Sound Blaster cards

There are samplers, can read the instruments in real-time from the hard drive. This saves memory, but requires sophisticated Vorpufferstrategie, so that no drop outs during playback through the loading of samples. The fact that the Sound Blaster drivers take a different approach and try to load the entire sound font into memory, it is clear that the size of the loaded SoundFonts not exceed the free memory in the computer.

In the current (2009) standard sizes of memory ( 512 megabytes to 2 gigabytes ), it does happen sometimes that a sound font can not be loaded, although the sound font is much smaller than the free memory. The reason is that Creative Labs ' driver to load the sound fonts use a technique called memory mapping, depending on the operating system version is subject to certain restrictions under Windows. Even with a trick can be used therefore with Creative Labs ' drivers under Windows not more than about 340 megabytes for SoundFonts. This is in large General MIDI sound fonts ( such as Crisis GM 3.01) still too little and then requires the use of a software synthesizer, is not familiar with such restrictions.

The aforementioned trick to move the upper limit of the usable memory as far as possible above, is to create a key in the Windows registry database (to be amended or if the key is already present). This is described in the Knowledge Base by Creative Labs in the solution # 5184 in the section How to load and configure SoundFont Banks in SoundFont Bank Manager in detail (see links). It shows that while is still not the total free memory for sound fonts available, but still can megabytes so under Windows XP soundfonts to about 280 are used. With Windows Server 2003, approximately 340 megabytes for SoundFonts can be used, the previous maximum limit under the 32-bit Windows operating systems.

Among the 64-bit versions of Windows, it is not a problem, even bigger soundfonts to 4 gigabytes with the Creative SoundFont Manager to load into memory.

Software for sound fonts

If there is no sound card from Creative Labs available, or if the restriction mentioned are bypassed at the memory usage, then offers a software synthesizer. On fast computers are then real-time capability (ie, for example, live conditions ) and output quality is no problem. In addition, offer full-fledged software synthesizer usually more options for sound generation and understand a number of other formats beyond SoundFonts.

There are two ways to use a software synthesizer in connection with soundfonts:

Commercial synthesizer

There are a whole range of adult software synthesizers or samplers. Some of the following programs read soundfonts directly, others are utilities for importing SoundFonts to the side.

  • Ableton Sampler
  • Audio Compositor ( officially no longer available )
  • Avanquest Music Producer
  • Bismark bs-1/bs-16
  • Image Line DirectWave
  • E -MU Proteus X/X2
  • E -MU Emulator X/X2/X3
  • Emagic EXS24
  • GigaSampler / GigaStudio
  • Steinberg HALion
  • MIDISyn
  • Native Instruments Kontakt
  • Native Instruments Battery
  • Fruity soundfont player ( based on LiveUpdate LiveSynth Pro and is available for FruityLoops Studio)
  • Orion Sampler
  • Propellerhead Reason NN -XT
  • Rgc: audio sfz ( VST instrument requires ASIO drivers )
  • Seer Systems Reality
  • Seer Systems Surreal
  • Solo Orchestra
  • MAZ Sound Tools VSampler

Free / Free Synthesizer

In addition to the commercial there are some free, free SoundFont synthesizer that satisfy simple to sophisticated demands.

  • SynthFont ( from the same provider, there is also a VSTi and a Winamp plugin which SoundFonts process )
  • Bass Midi Driver and Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth are free Windows MIDI driver ( XP/Vista/7/8, 32 /64 bit ) for the SoundFont software synthesizer in the BASS audio library ( Windows / Linux / OSX).
  • TX16Wx
  • Rgc: audio sfz Free ( VST instrument requires ASIO drivers )
  • Cakewalk SFZ Professional ( also free of charge, registration required )
  • Crystal Soft Synth
  • Timidity or TWSYNTH
  • MIDIG
  • SimpleSynth
  • Liefactory karl inger ( a 16 -step sequencer)
  • CsoundAV ( Gabriel Maldonado )
  • Linux Sampler
  • Short Circuit (from Vember Audio, is deprecated)
  • ModPlug Tracker ( by Olivier Lapicque )
  • Phenome VSTi ( by Prodyon Virtual Gear)
  • Jeskola XS -1 ( Buzz Machine and VSTi )

Utilities

There are a large number of auxiliary programs that serve a variety of purposes around the SoundFont format. The main assistance programs to be cut in the following.

The standard program for creating sound fonts is Creative Labs ' Vienna SoundFont Studio that supports the latest version 2.4 also 24 - bit samples. However, it is like its predecessor 2.3 sound card from Creative Labs advance. For owners of other sound cards instead comes Viena, a little bonus to SynthFont, questioned, since it makes no special demands on the sound card you are using. SoundFaction Alive is another SoundFont editor, which is also not tied to specific sound cards, which is free to get in contrast to the first two programs is not. Finally, there is Esbeekay, a program that can handle inter alia, with soundfonts, but only with SoundFonts version 1.x (. Sbk files), which are now no longer as good as used. Away from Microsoft Windows, there is Swami for Linux and Polyphontics by Sonic Amigos for Mac OS X.

To transfer or storage of these soundfonts are usually compressed to save space. For each archiving program can be used. However, there are programs that are dedicated to the compression of sound fonts, and therefore achieve very good compression rates. The two most common programs are SFPack of Megota software and sfArk by Melody Machine. There are also rathole of EdgeSounds and SFzip Future of Algorithms, but these are not particularly widespread. There are versions of sfArk for Linux and Mac OS X, however, only allow decompression ( sfArkXTc and sfArkXT ). From rathole there is next version of Microsoft Windows, a version for Mac OS X.

Last are still some programs worth mentioning that cover different areas of application. Mega Font is a dynamic SoundFont cache management with the help of the limitation can be circumvented in the disk space usage. Winamp 2.81 is also a special version in terms of sound fonts, because in this version of Winamp, the final version of the MIDI plug-ins is settled, the SoundFonts can use to play MIDI files. Last are still ModPlug Tracker (and its open source version OpenMPT ) BeRoTracker and Bush called Tracker that can also read SoundFonts.

Resource Interchange File Format Music sequencer Audio bit depth Chorus effect Sampler (musical instrument) Computer memory Midiboard Digital audio editor Audio Stream Input/Output Tutorial
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