Haha
Glad a few of you have put this to good use!
Hey, if Anyone here owns one of the following sound cards:
Sound Blaster Live series
Sound Blaster Audigy series
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 series (I'm currently running one of these)
Sound Blaster Audigy 4 series
Sound Blaster X-Fi series (if you have one, I'm jealous
: )
I found a Very nice "soundfont" a few years ago, which I'd be happy to send you. It's about 53 MB (I hope you have at least 256 MB (preferrably 512 or greater) of system RAM when you use this. This 53 MB sits in your system RAM
).
For those who don't know, a Soundfont works similar to a regular Font, except for MIDI files. They control what each instrument sound like. The quality of the soundfont directly affects the instruments' sound quality of any midi file. Soundfonts enable the user to change what their MIDIs sound like, by changing the sounds of the instruments. Only the above sound cards are soundfont compatible, however. Everyone else must live with whatever sounds are loaded onto the sound card, or use the Microsoft Windows default midi instruments, which are kinda crappy :angry:
You lucky guys with Sound Blaster X-Fis can also enjoy surround-sound midi files, and 24-bit soundfonts
People often don't respect the usefulness of MIDI and midi files because they only have exposure to junky sounds for their midis. I'd be more than willing to send my soundfont to anyone with this sound card. It's a free soundfont (don't worry, I didn't steal anything!), but the site I downloaded it from originally no longer exists.
I'll post up a demo of my soundfont on
http://www.angelfire.com/az3/action9000/index.html(Well, I don't claim the soundfont to me "mine", per se. I didn't program it. It's just my soundfont of choice for all midi work.
)
Click the link "Soundfont demo". If you don't see it, I haven't posted it yet.
:
The demo consists of clips from my "Peaceful Valley", "Adventuring", and "LBT 1 End Credits" midis. No prerendering, no nothing. I just recorded playback of the midi files. Remember, this recording is an MP3 file, so the audio is compressed. This means the actual quality of the soundfont is higher than what you hear in the recording (but honestly, it's very close).
I like this soundfont because it doesn't have the big, bulky sound that is found on most sound cards. Instead, it consists of a much softer, more natural sound on many of the instruments. Nothing is harsh-sounding, the percussion has some life to it, and all the instruments blend very nicely.
If you own one of those sound cards, and are interested in Much better midi performance, let me know and I'll post the soundfont up on
www.yousendit.com
