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SoundFont Players

Proteus VX - E-MU's Proteus® VX is the most powerful and complete software sampler in the world, featuring the E-MU's high quality sound engine with up to 192kHz sampling and playback and an arsenal of processing power that builds on E-MU's 35 years of synthesis experience. Works with any E-MU or non E-MU sound card. (PC)

Vienna SoundFont Studio - A free standalone SF2 player for users with Creative soundcards. Vienna SoundFont Editor is the original & definitive creation tool for developing SoundFont banks for use in the Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, and X-Fi series of Creative sound cards. (PC)

SFZ Player - Endless sample-arranging capabilities, outstanding sound quality, built-in effects, adjustable CPU/quality settings to adjust it to your hardware, fully multitimbral operation and several loading modes make sfz the perfect choice for sample enthusiasts and composers. A 'must-have' for any freebie-hunter. (PC)

SynthFont - SynthFont is a program for playing midi files using SoundFont files. SynthFont combines this data with the audio data in a SoundFont to produce ("render") an audio version of the song. (PC)

FLStudio - The SoundFont Player is an FL Studio add-on that gives you the power to load, play and render soundfont files(.sf2 files) in FL Studio. The player is based on the second generation of the LiveSynth soundfont engine developed by LiveUpdate. This engine is by far the most accurate SoundFont player currently available that integrates perfectly in FL Studio. SoundFont Player supports 'slides' and 'sends' to your own send tracks, and loaded soundfonts are shared between instances of the player. (PC)

Megafont - Megafont is a program created for dynamically managing, loading and unloading SoundFont files on Creative SBLive! (PC)

ShortCircuit - Shortcircuit was created as a reaction against the ongoing trend where software samplers are being designed with the primary intent of library playback. It is intended for people who, like us, consider a sampler to be a musical instrument in its own right, and not just a way to emulate other instruments. It has been a very high priority to make sure that adding and editing individual samples is as fast and logical as possible. (PC)

Virtual SoundFont Manger - VSFManager (short for Virtual SoundFont Manager) is a utility to help you managing and loading instrument presets in the memory of your SoundFont compatible sound card. It can load a single instrument preset into a single slot of a bank in memory. This means that you don't need to load the whole SF2 file if you need only a single instrument. And the other slots of the bank are still free and you may load presets in them also. (PC)

VSamp - VSamp is a software sample player for the Macintosh. It comprises: a program for creating and playing virtual instruments; a VST plugin for playing VSamp instruments from within a VST sequencer; and an AudioUnits plugin for playing VSamp instruments from within an AudioUnits sequencer. (Mac/PC)

FluidSynth - FluidSynth is a real-time software synthesizer based on the SoundFont 2 specifications. (Mac/PC)

Bismark bs-16 - bs-16 is a multitimbral software playback sampler for Steinberg VST 2.4, and Apple Audio Units plug-in format. You can play all SoundFont 2 files for Creative Sound Blaster series files on your host application. (Mac/PC)

Qsynth - Qsynth is a fluidsynth GUI front-end application written in C++ around the Qt4 toolkit using Qt Designer. Eventually it may evolve into a softsynth management application allowing the user to control and manage a variety of command line softsynth but for the moment it wraps the excellent FluidSynth. FluidSynth is a command line software synthesiser based on the Soundfont specification. (Linux)

 

Reviews & Editorials

Electronic Musican Experimenting with SoundFonts - SoundFonts are like a gift that keeps on giving. For commercially-minded musicians, SoundFonts can open the door to a potential market of millions through the creation and sale of sample libraries. For beginners, using SoundFonts can serve as an ideal way to learn about sampling and synthesis. And for just about anyone, they can be an excellent resource to add to an audio arsenal. (Read more....)

Cakewalk Proteus Pack Create Digital Music Review - Sound modules of yesteryear rarely earn much love today: now that we’re spoiled for choice with soft synths, ROMplers are unlikely to inspire the same passion. Not so with the E-MU Proteus. These rack modules of sounds were virtual candy stores for sound lovers, beloved by composers and musicians for their broad range of perfectly-crafted sound sets. If you’re an E-MU lover, there’s just no real substitute for some of these sounds. That means the latest news from Cakewalk should get your attention, whether you’re an old Proteus pro or discovering these for the first time. (Read more....)

Cakewalk Proteus Pack Electronic Musician Review - Despite other synths in its price range that had more-robust synthesis capabilities, the rackmount E-mu Systems Proteus was a tremendous success. Its popularity hinged on its crisp, clean sound and a generous ROM, which was packed with well-chosen instruments and waveforms from E-mu's acclaimed sample library. Response to the trailblazing module led to a bumper crop of genre-specific modules specializing in orchestral, dance, ethnic, hip-hop, Latin, and more. The later modules boasted larger ROMs and more-sophisticated filters and modulation capabilities. For years, you could scarcely find a MIDI studio that didn't have at least a couple of Proteus units. (Read more....)

Cakewalk Proteus Pack Wusik Review - Well, what more can be said about the quality of these sounds? They are, as they have been since their release, some of the most sought after sounds in electronic music production. With over 3,500 patches total, this collection, that includes all the sounds from E-Mu's Proteus 2000, Mo' Phatt, Xtreme Lead 1, Planet Earth, and the PX-7 (Protean) hardware modules, is the most complete package of sounds one could hope for as a Dimension Pro/LE user. Incredibly, the whole collection, even mapped out in a software product, has less than a 300 MB footprint. Even more impressive is that these sounds are even better than they are played within E-Mu's own software. (Read more....)

Ensoniq ZR, MR, and ASR Wusik Review - These are those sounds heard on countless records. Seriously, the ones that the typical hobbyist producer has heard and thought about all the awesome tracks they could make if only those sounds were available in their own arsenal. These are the sounds many feared would only be locked to the Timbaland Niko/Meko in their revival. Well, here they are, finally available to anyone who wants them; and they sound better than ever: the basses sit very well in any mix; the strings have loads and loads of character; the synths have a memory lane feel to them; and the brass patches are very good--which is a nice change of pace from many sound libraries as these don't make you cringe. (Read more....)

DSF Old World Instruments Reason Refill Wusik Review - Old World is a collection of African melodic and percussion instruments, Chinese and Indian (from India) wind instruments, Russian ethnic string instruments, and steel percussion instruments. The samples were originally used in the Proteus Planet Earth sound module, as well as E-MU's Emulator sampler. The content is similar to the Old World SoundFont collection, but not identical.(Read more....)

SoundFont Wikipedia - Online tuturials for using SoundFont files with Reason, Kontakt, Halion, VSampler, and Garageband. SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology designed to bridge the gap between recorded and synthesized audio, especially for the purposes of computer music composition. SoundFont is also a registered trademark E-mu Systems, Inc., and the exclusive license for re-formatting and managing historical SoundFont content has been acquired by Digital Sound Factory. (Read more....)

Digital Sound Factory Wikipedia - Digital Sound Factory is a sound design company that creates sound libraries, known as SoundFont libraries, for playback on synthesizers and computers compatible with Steinberg Cubase, Cakewalk Sonar, Propellerheads Reason, Steinberg Halion, Native Instruments Kontakt, Apple Garageband, Apple Logic, Ableton Live, GenieSoft Overture, Finale, Creative Labs Audigy/X-Fi, E-MU Systems EmulatorX/Proteus X, FL Studio, VSamp, SFZ, SynthFont, and more. (Read more....)

DSF Yamaha Motifator Sound Libraries - Sound Designer Tim Swartz talks about and demonstrates sounds from his Digital Sound Factory sample libraries featured in the XSPand Your World promotion. (Watch Video)

Timothy Swartz Interview - “Legendary:” a word like this, especially in the music business, is tossed around to just about anyone that has made anything notable to even the smallest audience. However, when applied to Timothy Swartz of Digital Sound Factory, using the term legendary is almost an understatement. Music, even beyond the musician, is about sound, and Timothy Swartz is all about the sound. His ear, and his supervision during the recording sessions with E-MU in development of the various Proteus modules have found their way onto almost everything we have heard on the radio for almost twenty years.(Read more....)

 

Resources

Creative SoundFont Information - Creative and its music subsidiary, E-MU, developed SoundFonts, an easy-to-use music format packed with professional features.

Creative Developer SoundFont Tools - Documentation pertaining to Creative's SoundFont synthesizer and SoundFont file format.

Cakewalk SFZ Definitions - The sfz format is a file format to define how a collection of samples are arragned for performance. The goal behind the sfz format is to provide a free, simple, minimalistic and expandable format to arrange, distribute and use audio samples with the highest possible quality and the highest possible performance flexibility.

 

Additional Information

SoundFont to SFZ Convertor - sfZed is an editor for the sfz format, the format for the sfz SoundFont Player and and for CakeWalk Dimension instruments. The editor works with audio samples to map them to the keyboard, and shape them to create the sound you want. It uses the sfz sample player vsti plugin to audition the results, the synth technology which the sfz format was based on with full polyphony. It will also convert Soundfont sf2 to sfz, giving you the opportunity to change and fix the way it plays back. The sfz format contains over 200 settings like velocity sensitivity, loops, reverb, EQ and controller settings to create the sound you want for your music. sfZed works with a midi keyboard to allow you to play and set values, including mapping drum samples.