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Topic: Soundfonts from soundfonts.com (Read 2874 times) previous topic - next topic

Soundfonts from soundfonts.com

Has anyone here used the orchestral soundfonts available at soundfont.com? If yes, was it good? I plan on buying both volumes of soundfonts (those huge 32MB sets from orchestral sounds) and if anyone has it, I'd be pleased to hear your comments.

Re: Soundfonts from soundfonts.com

Reply #2 –
I've purchased both. The section strings bank is worth the purchase price; the winds/brass/solo strings bank is not.

My current MIDI setup is a combination of different banks, including those two. If you have the memory, I also recommend Fluid R3, available from http://www.hammersound.net/ . Be warned that this is a huge font, and you will need a utility like Megafont ( http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/Megafont/ ) in order to use it.

The section strings bank is very good, offering marcato, tremolo, pizzicato, and legato patches for each of the orchestral string instruments (violin, viola, cello, contrabass). The marcato contrabass has an unbelievably strong attack, which allows it to be heard over just about anything.

As for the winds/brass/solo strings, the only patches, in my opinion, that are better than what is freely available (from the Melin or Fluid soundfonts) are the timpani and solo strings. However, the timpani patch will require extensive tweaking to be used with General MIDI files, as most notes are off by an octave and some are assigned to timpani rolls. The solo strings are, overall, very good, though you will probably want to increase the volume the of the solo viola. Alternatively, you could use the solo viola from Fluid, though the sound quality deteriorates in the higher register.

As for the rest of the Soundfount.com winds bank, the brass patches in Merlin and the winds from Fluid are better. The attacks on the winds from Soundfont.com are way too slow, in my opinion. Actually, the best flute that I've heard is the Cambridge Concert Flute from Hammersound.net. You'll probably need to tweak the volume up on it, though.

In short, in my experience, no one bank has all of the best patches. The section strings from Soundfont.com are good, but, for the most part, you're better off with Fluid and/or Merlin for the winds/brass.