About SoundFonts
If you are the owner of a modern Sound Blaster sound card, then you may have heard of or even used SoundFont banks. For those who don't know, SoundFont banks are sets of samples, which are recordings of real or synthesized musical instruments that can be controlled by MIDI. Not only do SoundFont banks store the recorded sounds, but they also store how the sample is to be played back. For example, you can tell the sound card to play a particular sample loud or soft, short or long, bright or mellow, etc. You can also layer instruments to create new hybrid sounds.
This is, of course, a very basic description of what SoundFonts do with audio. Many musicians, myself included, have adopted the SoundFont format into their own compositions due to its flexibility and power.
The SoundFont technology was first introduced with the Sound Blaster AWE32 back in 1994, and native support has been present on most Sound Blaster sound cards since. Many software synthesizers and a few additional hardware devices also support SoundFonts with varying degrees of accuracy.
Some SoundFonts follow a standard set of instruments, usually Roland's General MIDI (GM) or GS standard. These SoundFonts can be loaded into your sound card's SoundFont memory cache or into a compatible software synthesizer. They can greatly enhance the audio quality experienced when playing MIDI files compatible with Roland's GM or GS standard, and they can also be used for creating your own compositions. My GeneralUser GS SoundFont follows Roland's GS standard, and should be a noticeable improvement over the stock MIDI instruments present on most sound cards.
Please check out my SoundFont banks by clicking on the links to the left. For more information on SoundFont technology, please visit the official website.
