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Click here to see this page in German. DOWNLOAD 8MBGM ENHANCED NOWSoundfonts are files that you can use in order to play MIDI music in a better quality at the computer. These can be either MIDI files on the hard disc (files with the ending .MID or .RMI) or the MIDI music in a computer game like Descent and Monkey Island. Usually, soundfonts can be recognized by the ending .SF2. In order to use them, either a compatible sound card (e.g. the Creative Audigy 2 or 4) or a suitable software (e.g. FluidSynth) is necessary. Soundfonts represent a kind of link between recorded and synthesized music. They contain wave samples and further settings (e.g. pitch, dynamics, filter settings), in order to control the MIDI synthesizer of a sound card. The higher the quality of the utilized samples, and the more precise the settings of the soundfonts are, the better is its overall quality. Soundfonts not only use the often limited RAM of a sound card, but also the normal memory of the computer. For this reason, wave samples can be stored in them in a size and quality which is hardly possible on sound cards. By using soundfonts, one can increase the playback quality of MIDI files on a Creative sound card considerably. To reach that, they have to be loaded first. At the Creative Audigy 2, for example, the “SoundFont-Bank-Manager” has to be used. Usually, it can be found in the Creative folder. Left to the soundfont (e.g. 4MB GMGSMT) is the word “Bank”. If you click on it, a new window opens. In it, you can load or remove a soundfont.
Since I was not satisfied with the MIDI sound quality of my Audigy 2, I have developed a soundfont: the 8MBGM ENHANCED. It is based on Merlin 8mbgm_plus13 and was improved with instruments of other soundfonts. My objective was to obtain a MIDI sound which is comparable with that of my old Terratec Maestro 32/96 sound card. On the ROM of this ISA card, which has just a size of 4 MB, 393 instruments are stored. Finally, the intro sequence of level 13 of Descent 1 does not sound distorted, but in its original quality. My soundfont, however, is not only suitable for Descent 1 and 2, but for all other games that support the General MIDI standard. These are many old DOS games in particular. The soundfont technology was developed by the company E-MU/ENSONIQ for the wavetable synthesis of sound cards from Creative Labs. The first sound card, which was able to use soundfonts, was the Sound Blaster AWE 32 with E-MU8000 chip. It was introduced in 1994. In 1996, the soundfont format 2.0 appeared which offered numerous innovations. Since that, Creative Labs promotes soundfonts as an open standard. That means that everyone may contribute solutions that support the format. In 1998, the soundfont format was enhanced to version 2.01. However, it had its breakthrough first at the end user with the Audigy series which appeared in 2002. In 2005, format 2.04 was introduced with the Sound Blaster X-Fi series. It offers the possibility to produce samples in 24 bit. The following sound cards are compatible to soundfonts:
In order to use soundfonts that are larger than 100 MB in Windows, you should apply the following entry in the registry: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\Memory
Management] Alternatively, one can download the following file and then double click it: Soundfonts.reg In order to produce soundfonts yourself, you can use Vienna SoundFont Studio (it is shipped with Creative Soundblaster cards). It is suitable to edit existing soundfonts as well. However, it requires a sound card by Creative Labs. If you have a different card, you can use the program Viena instead. The Creative SoundFont-Bank-Manager is also useful. With it, one can not only load particular instruments, but move instruments from one soundfont to another as well. It is also suitable to change the dynamic soundfont cache. The latter is especially important with very big soundfonts (over 100 MB). One can produce and edit MIDI songs with the program Cubase SX 3. Particularly, it is suitable to listen to single instruments of a MIDI file. This is useful if you like to compare the effect of several soundfonts with each other. Links to soundfont sites on the Internet:
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