KVR Audio

simmy · Post by **simmy** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 7:47 pm

Do people still use these, or are they old, and unwieldy as compared to sampler stuff and so forth ?

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 7:49 pm

I still use them. I'm a soundfonts junky.

Soundfonts just wouldn't be the same without SFZ though.

simmy · Post by **simmy** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:06 pm

SFZ whats dat

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:15 pm

SFZ is a soundfont player for those of us who don't use Audigy soundcards but still use soundfonts. Probably one of the best soundfont players out there right now.

I still think soundfonts are pretty much bottom-rung, so to speak, but I like the sound.

simmy · Post by **simmy** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:19 pm

bottom rung as in workflow, quality, UI ?

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:28 pm

Well there's nothing necessarily bottom-rung about Soundfonts; there are no better or worse than, say, the industry-standard AKAI format. If the samples used to make the soundfont are top-quality, then it will sound top-quality.

Actually, the SFZ and the Creative playback engine rate very highly when compared to other software samplers. But all those free soundfonts floating around, sampled and re-sampled from god-knows-what kinda keep the quality level low; but you also gets lots and lots of sounds to choose from for free, and there are some perfectly excellent free ones out there.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:33 pm

bduffy wrote:Well there's nothing necessarily bottom-rung about Soundfonts; there are no better or worse than, say, the industry-standard AKAI format. If the samples used to make the soundfont are top-quality, then it will sound top-quality.

Actually, the SFZ and the Creative playback engine rate very highly when compared to other software samplers. But all those free soundfonts floating around, sampled and re-sampled from god-knows-what kinda keep the quality level low; but you also gets lots and lots of sounds to choose from for free, and there are some perfectly excellent free ones out there.

Exactly! You beat me to saying it, hehe. And now with the new Creative cards, you can use up to 24bit samples for your soundfonts, which is more than adequate. I know soundfonts used to be kind of limited in the quality of the sound, because weren't soundfonts limited to 8bit at one time? It's not like that anymore though.

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:37 pm

Ildon wrote:
bduffy wrote:Well there's nothing necessarily bottom-rung about Soundfonts; there are no better or worse than, say, the industry-standard AKAI format. If the samples used to make the soundfont are top-quality, then it will sound top-quality.

Actually, the SFZ and the Creative playback engine rate very highly when compared to other software samplers. But all those free soundfonts floating around, sampled and re-sampled from god-knows-what kinda keep the quality level low; but you also gets lots and lots of sounds to choose from for free, and there are some perfectly excellent free ones out there.
Exactly! You beat me to saying it, hehe. And now with the new Creative cards, you can use up to 24bit samples for your soundfonts, which is more than adequate. I know soundfonts used to be kind of limited in the quality of the sound, because weren't soundfonts limited to 8bit at one time? It's not like that anymore though.

Jeez...you gotta dig back to, like, pre-1996 or something for that!! Even the AWE32 cards could do 44-16! Creative has been pretty much on the cutting edge of consumer PC audio standards. I owe a LOT to Soundfonts for gaining experience in DAW programming; some of the happiest, most creative (no pun) days of my life were spent with my brand new SBLive!, Cakewalk Pro Audio 7 and 300mhz...

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:41 pm

bduffy wrote:
Ildon wrote:
bduffy wrote:Well there's nothing necessarily bottom-rung about Soundfonts; there are no better or worse than, say, the industry-standard AKAI format. If the samples used to make the soundfont are top-quality, then it will sound top-quality.

Actually, the SFZ and the Creative playback engine rate very highly when compared to other software samplers. But all those free soundfonts floating around, sampled and re-sampled from god-knows-what kinda keep the quality level low; but you also gets lots and lots of sounds to choose from for free, and there are some perfectly excellent free ones out there.
Exactly! You beat me to saying it, hehe. And now with the new Creative cards, you can use up to 24bit samples for your soundfonts, which is more than adequate. I know soundfonts used to be kind of limited in the quality of the sound, because weren't soundfonts limited to 8bit at one time? It's not like that anymore though.
Jeez...you gotta dig back to, like, pre-1996 or something for that!! Even the AWE32 cards could do 44-16! Creative has been pretty much on the cutting edge of consumer PC audio standards. I owe a LOT to Soundfonts for gaining experience in DAW programming; some of the happiest, most creative (no pun) days of my life were spent with my brand new SBLive!, Cakewalk Pro Audio 7 and 300mhz...

Oh, hehe. That was basically why I said they were more or less bottom-rung, because I thought it was just recently that soundfonts were able to get up to CD-quality audio.

My mistake.

What about flexibility? This is also why I said that... because can't you do more with, say, an Akai or Kontakt than you could with an Audigy card, or am I mistaken again?

LBN · Post by **LBN** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 1:40 am

I like the ubiquitousness of the soundfont format. I mainly use it to create custom drum kits that can then be used in most programs and shared easily. A few times I used Chainer to create a soundfont of a patch to share with friends who didn't have the particular synths.

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:18 am

Ildon wrote:What about flexibility? This is also why I said that... because can't you do more with, say, an Akai or Kontakt than you could with an Audigy card, or am I mistaken again?

Not sure I understand the question. You can do a hell of a lot more with Kontakt than either an AKAI or an Audigy in terms of the sheer amount of formats it can read and import, and because Kontakt is software it is infinitely expandable, and with Kontakt scripting alone it's light years beyond them, which are pretty much legacy formats now. So yeah, I guess basically it is more flexible. But like LBN said, Soundonts are immensely popular and supported, but the format itself isn't terribly flexible.

But you can create whatever your heart desires, if the samples are there!