After reading about these on another thread, I thought it might be a good idea to create a thread dedicated to the use of and methods involved with soundfonts. Maybe those with more experience could help out us who haven't used them yet.

After hearing your recording, stephenc, I was wondering if I could obtain some advice. The sound on the recording was fantastic and I'm tempted to give the method a try.

My computer is fairly decent, a Dell 5150 (3ghz, 512mb). Am planning on buying an external SoundBlaster Audigy 2NX maybe this weekend as I would like to record a few tracks.

My digital piano is a Yamaha YDP-113. What ports do I use to connect the piano to the computer? Is it the MIDI Out from the instrument going into the soundcard?

And also, do I need some sort of sequencer software, or can I record straight into audacity with the soundfont?

Thanks,
Euan.

Hi Euan,

First let me say I am no expert on these matters, but I can walk you through how mine is setup and if you get the Audigy 2 card, that will make it even better as i have the same.

Edit..It looks like the Audigy 2 USB does not have a midi port...have you got room for an internal card?

First, my digital is connected to the computer via the USB out on the digital to (clearly!) the USB in on the PC. If you have not got USB connectivity on your yamaha (which I don;t think yours does), you can get a midi cable (http://www.zzounds.com/item--MIMSCMA6) that goes from your digital to your soundcard. Before I had USB, i used this setup but USB is so much easier. (BTW, with my internal Audigy card, to use the midi cable setup I had to attach a seperate component physically to the card which was simply a midi connector included with the package...i can elaborate on this if need be)

Once your digital is connected via midi to the PC, and the software that comes with the card is installed, it is simply a matter of opening the utility called Soundfont Bank Manager in the Creative folder created in Start menu when the software is installed. In this utility you can select your midi in device (your digital), and this is where you load soundfonts to the memory banks. As i mentioned in the other thread, the font I used (and the best by far that i have found) was the GPO Concert Steinway Ver 2 found free at www.sf2midi.com. Download this and unzip or unpack it as required and simply load the file called GPO Concert Steinway Ver 2.sf2 into Soundfont Bank Manager.

Once this is done, you should be able to play your digital using the new font sounds through your PC speakers (turn the volume completely down on the digital and adjust it via the PC). I like to connect the line out from the PC to Line in on digital for an even better sound and more realistic feel without headphones.

To record my playing, I use cool edit pro (audacity would do also) and in volume control in start menu make sure midi in is not on mute in the "playback" window (where you adjust the wave and main volume controls etc..you could mute line in and mic etc to reduce any unwanted noise)), and in the "recording" options (go to properties, recording) select "MIDI Synth" as your recording device. Then simply record away in your recording program.

So thats the basics. Your PC specs (RAM CPU etc) should be fine, mine works perfect at 512mb (but if stuff is loading ie virus scanners etc while i play it jumps around a bit, so just close evrything you can)

Hope this helps somewhat, it is really quite simple, but feel free to ask if you encounter some troubles, and as i said, if you get that audigy I can definetely be of more assistyance!

Cheers

Stephen

Hi,

I managed to play a midifile with the soundfont
Stephen found with the free FluidSynth:

"fluidsynth.exe -g 5 GPO-Concert-Steinway-ver2.sf2 sonata_k_32.MID"

This works under Windows with any soundcard.

Hi Stephen

Was that a groan I heard down under?

Hi Stephen

Hey first thankyou so much more sending me the MP3's of my midis with your steinway sample.

Wow...they sound fantastic , it is really unusual to hear me play on a steinway and I like it!

If anyone wants to hear what this Steinway sample sounds like? by all means take a listen

The Way We Were (played with bad timing as usual) Steinway sample (click)

Try your best to totally ignore my out of time playing! (once again (grrr!)...but, I think I am actually becoming aware of it when listening back which I hope is gonna be a good thang if I can become aware of it when playing...we'll just have to see at the next recital! yikes...work to be done between now and then to cure this affliction me thinks?)...and just listen to how great that free sample sounds

Only glitch is - it doesn't pick up the sustain at the start? that apart it aint bad.

Thanks again


Lee

Steinway sounds great Lee/Stephen, thanks both! It makes a strong point for sf samples! Is there anything that would run this on a Mac???

Lee, relax, I found this for you:
for Lee!

funny ...I may use it

thanks


Lee

Strangely I do play to the beat of my foot tapping!!...I am going to work harder on making myself automatically aware of which beat in the four I am at.

I have an idea, it came to me this morning I'm gonna work on it...lets see how it pans out?

Hey this is a watershed day for me

I have finally figured out how to record into audacity from the rack

thanks to Weez and his cables (so you can relax now Weez it works...YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! )

so for comparison here is the same poxy midi

and apologies to StephenC the sustain problem is the midi or my foot? not your sound font!! LOL

For those that are interested in how much better the £850/$1500 motif rack is than a free sample
(and if anyone says it is worse BEWARE!!! )

Out on timing but thru the rack (click)


regards


Lee

Lee, I was going to comment after listening to the first recording earlier this morning that I thought your rack sounded much better!

I like the timing better through the rack!

Hey Lee, that motif does sound absoloutely fantastic!! Do you know where the samples are taken from ( a Yamaha C7 maybe?).

That said I don't think i favour one over the other though, i like them both equally and it probably depends on the mood I'm in...the Steinway version I love because it has tremendous resonance (i think thats what they call it) and a mellower sound. Yet the motif has a brighter, sharper sound and is really awesome in the higher octaves. But whatever way one is inclined, theres no doubting that this is a major advantage of digital pianos, you can play a yamaha, bosendorfer and steinway at the touch of a button!

Spot on with that midi thing and the opening missing the sustain, I don't recall seeing a pedal indicator (BTW do you place these in yourself or are they picked up as you play)

Also, the USB thing, is that transferring a midi signal from the motif to your PC?

I agree, and this is only a 50 mb sf2, there is a 200mb one at the same site but its not nearly as good IMO, but i think they have a lot of potential..imagine if the steinway one were 200mb!

Dunno much about Mac PC"s myself, but I would assume that if you can install a soundfont compatible soundcard the procedure should be much the same as I outline above...what soundcard do you have?

reepicheep...can you elaborate further on this for us and possibly explain how to get this setup....does the SF2 file play off the hard disk this way, rather than straight from memory banks?

Lee, how did you record into Audacity using the usb-to-device (rack-to-computer) cable? I've got it hooked up but I have no clue what to do.

Hi geek

I recorded line in into my soundcard

a M audio 24/96

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496-main.html


The pedal should be picked up as I press it but, sometimes music masterworks seems to miss the first one.....hmmm?

regards


Lee

SynthFont (http://www.synthfont.com) is a windows program that will play midi files using whatever soundfont you load into it (regardless of what sound card you have).

I just started using it today, but so far it seems to work pretty well.

FluidSynth is a software synt. More specifically, it is a commandline synth that can play midifiles using a specified .sf2 file. Both are loaded into memory before playing. As a SW engineer I find it interesting as the source code is very usable.

To play a song, download the archive and unpack it
in some directory. Also copy any .sf2 file and midifiles you want to use to this directory. Now start a command window (also known as a DOS window) and type the command as shown before.

Note that there are several graphical front-ends
for this tool, for example qsynth
but none that I like on windows so I am thinking of building a small GUI to play (and record to mp3) piano midi files.

Hope this helps,

gr.
Jerry.

Thanks for the link, I've downloaded and tried it out...nice little program!

Nice find DeepElem, Synthfont is great for playing midi's with your sf2 sample! When I've tried to record and play live however, it is very unresponsive to keyboard, so probably not designed for live playing (unless there is a setting that allows sustain and touch sensitivity etc?).

My soundcard allows me to record "what you hear" into a wave file, I wonder if others without such a sundcard feature can record their midi's with sf2 samples into wave's?

I was getting some occasional clicks and artifacts. I found a grand piano soundfont that I like the sound of better, and the clicks went away. The soundfont is at http://www.pianosounds.com/freesoundfont.htm

BTW, SynthFont will "Play" a midi and output it to a file. If you select the "To File" button at the top and then hit play you will be playing the midi file with the selected sound font and it will get saved to a file. You can select the format you want the file in, the formats include WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC. I think that's what you mean stephenc by recordin "what you hear".

I've come across another excellent soundfont file.
It is called 'Equinox Grand Piano' and contains both a Steinway D and Yamaha C7 (http://www.geocities.jp/shansoundfont/).

I think the Yamaha C7 sample is really fantastic, I've recorded the first half or so of the Yiruma song that ShiroKuro posted recently called "River flows in you" with the Yamaha C7 sample to, all I've added is a little reverb..

http://www.box.net/public/jplnd90098

Hi stephenc,

Are you still playing with soundfonts? Which are your favorite currently? Is the above Yamaha C7 still the best you've found (I'm looking for a good (free) Yamaha to fill out my collection ).

How did i miss this thread??

My sequencer won't do full soundfont preset editing yet, but you can do some minimal editing with it. http://shazware.com/ditty

Also some soundfont links in the midi area of
http://shazware.com/me/faves.html


I would NOT recommend the PCMCIA notebook audigy card or any external audigy cards.

But I =love= my internal desktop audigy card !!

It'll also render .WAV files a little better than Synthfont, and the other software .mid => .wav apps. (Not that those apps aren't great, of course.)

Also got this info from a guy in the digital forum:

Piano
NS_Piano for light, more moody stuff
There are two decent pianos here too: http://www.hum.aau.dk/~bovbjerg/piano.html
And the Giga piano is great for it size, available from sf2midi.com
Drums
GSCW drums (convert to soundfont, or they probably already have been converted): http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=103752
The NS_Kit7free and previous NS_Kits are pretty good.
Ruffrider and Easyrider drums are also nice. (great ride cymbals!)
The Maestro Cream Drums are really good, and have alternate snare sounds and brushes and stuff.


That's all i got for now.
Once I get my new rig set up and some more time for development, well,
Ahhhhl bee BOCK...

...Steve

Hi Sid,

I've not used soundfonts for a while now since I got the Bosendorfer giga file and my yamaha acoustic piano. However, I did think the GPO Steinway Concert was the best sounding font followed by the Yamaha C7 - there are thousands out there, but a lot a quite average. I never paid for a soundfont though, so I'm not sure if purchased ones are any better.