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Tristan

What SoundFonts do you use?

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esselfortium said:

Oh god it's raping my music into an incoherent muddy mess please make it stop


Really? I guess I'll have to try again. I was pretty satisfied with it (especially the Acoustic Guitar).

Not to go off topic, but if you had a way of imagining the Distorted Guitar, what would it be?

Mr. Freeze said:

Any soundfonts with guitars that don't suck?


CGM3, but it sounds more OPL than guitar.

Example. Doom E1M1 (From the website)
http://www.bismutnetwork.com/01Download/Music/Crisis/DemoMidi3.0/Doom1(01-Hanger).mp3

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esselfortium said:

Oh god it's raping my music into an incoherent muddy mess please make it stop


Are you sure you're not the one doing that? what's it supposed to sound like?

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40oz said:

Are you sure you're not the one doing that? what's it supposed to sound like?

It's a combination of issues. The acoustic guitar is lacking in high frequencies, so it gets completely buried in the background behind the distorted guitar which is a lot louder than it ought to be. And the whole mix sounds like it's drowning in reverb, which makes a lot of notes indistinct even on the loud distorted guitar.

For comparison, here's how it sounds with the SoundCanvas instruments I composed it with. Not as flashy, but a lot clearer: http://essel.spork-chan.net/music/wips/btsx-entering-c.mp3

Also, BlackFish, that dropbox link is giving me a 403, so for now I'll have to take your word for it that Vocaroo screwed with the quality. Listening to it again now, I think I can tell -- sounds like it's cut down the sampling rate pretty badly from what you had, which would account for the lack of clarity and general muddiness. With that in mind, it's hard to tell much about the actual mix you uploaded.

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40oz said:

Are you sure you're not the one doing that? what's it supposed to sound like?


How can he be doing that? Do you not know how MIDI works? Please tell me you know how midi works. I could remap all the voices to drums and play it that way.

Thing is, you can't really prepare your sequence for whatever soundfont people throw at it. Personally, I hate the SC55 sound banks, but since I had to use it at school, I know how to use it effectively, as well as the E-MU banks, which were popularized by the AWE and SB Live! cards.

Midi sequencing is pretty hard to do. What sounds great on one sound bank sucks sewer on another.

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fraggle said:

Interesting. :)

ZDoom's GUS emulator is based on the old TiMidity (not T++) but Randy modified it based on the GUS driver code. Might be worth taking a look at what changes he made exactly. The easy ones are those flagged by the use of the midi_timiditylike cvar.

I'm glad to see GUS emulation becoming more common in ports.

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esselfortium said:

It's a combination of issues. The acoustic guitar is lacking in high frequencies, so it gets completely buried in the background behind the distorted guitar which is a lot louder than it ought to be. And the whole mix sounds like it's drowning in reverb, which makes a lot of notes indistinct even on the loud distorted guitar.


That's fair enough. When I was mixing I was concerned about the volume of the distorted guitar and wanted the acoustical one to stand out. In the mixer the distorted guitars are already noticeably lower than the others, but not as low as the sample you provided. The reverb can be dealt with as well, but it was added more of a stylistic choice so I'll tweak it some.

I'll PM you if I have any more results so I don't derail the thread anymore. I posted those MP3s because I share the frustration others might have that the GM Distored/Overdrive Guitar doesn't sound much like a guitar at all, more like a fancy brass instrument.

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Gez said:

I'm glad to see GUS emulation becoming more common in ports.

Very much agree!

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GreyGhost said:

I'm thinking of getting one of those. What's the most convenient way of hooking it up to a PC?

You need a MIDI port of some kind. Old sound cards always used to have them (the big chunky D-connector that doubled as a game port) but it seems (quite understandably) that quite a lot of modern sound cards don't have them any more. Lots of the PCI cards still seem to have them so if you have a spare PCI slot you could use that. It looks like you can get USB dongles that provide them too, which may be a more future-proof option.

You then just need the right cable. Most MIDI devices (SoundCanvas included) seem to use DIN connectors for MIDI, so you'll presumably need some kind of adapter cable. Check eBay.

EDIT: Looks like the easiest thing to do is just get a cheap USB-MIDI dongle like this. Costs almost nothing.

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Yep - a USB dongle would be the easiest option, especially for laptops. I've a Soundblaster 128 that could be brought out of retirement but would need to buy/make a lead for it. If I want to be really cheap I've a MIDI-Serial adapter somewhere that was part of a job-lot of Amiga peripherals, odds are it'll need a driver for the PC. Or I could consider getting a SC-55 Mark II, which also supports RS232.

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Yeah.
I believe I have this one.

1. Using that, connect the Sound Canvas to some USB port.
2. Find whatever driver it needs
3. In Windows 7 or 8 (Vista too probably) Change a registry setting to force midi onto your external device. It's on Google.

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Wasn't aware of the registry hack, more evidence of how well Microsoft supports industry standards? Thanks Shaviro & fraggle, time to go shopping.

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Stygian said:

Musical Box is a little obscure, so here are some samples, if you are interested.


Is that the evanesance sound font? (first hit in google for "musicalbox"). Must be one of the largest ones too, at 2 gig.

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It changed its name. It seems to be so big that BASSMIDI stutters when loading new instrument. Wish it had a setting to dump the whole soundfont in RAM.

I don't like it enough to justify the space. SGM-v2.01 is more consistent and it only takes a small fraction of the space on my HDD.

Regarding registry hacks for MIDI stuff: if you install BASSMIDI you get a GUI that lets you pick your MIDI output on Vista/7. It seems to do a good job with other drivers, though I haven't tried it with any hardware devices.

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I just downloaded SGM v2.01 and I have to say this is the best soundfont so far. Better than WeedsGM.

The only track that has suffered so far from it is my own efmidi_1.mid, where the sound of the acoustic solo has an annoying clunky noise in the background which is quite noticeable. Otherwise it's great. The vibraphone and overdriven/distorion guitars are very good.

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BlackFish said:

Virtual Midi Synth has that option.


So it does. Seems, however, that the soundfont is so big that option just causes an error. It's more reliable than BASSMIDI, though, so it looks like you've found me a good replacement.

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Eris Falling said:

I just downloaded SGM v2.01 and I have to say this is the best soundfont so far. Better than WeedsGM.

The only track that has suffered so far from it is my own efmidi_1.mid, where the sound of the acoustic solo has an annoying clunky noise in the background which is quite noticeable. Otherwise it's great. The vibraphone and overdriven/distorion guitars are very good.


My only gripe with SGM2.01 is that the bass guitars are too quiet and sometimes the kick drum. Otherwise, it's top notch for a free soundfont :)

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might as well ask here: if i have a MIDI song handy, and would like to run it through a soundfont in FL Studio, how do i do that? the soundfont player i've had numerous issues when doing so. and for that matter, is there a way to make FL export a MIDI that's played through my soundcard's synth?

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How would I go about using a new soundfont with Doom? And are there any free SC-55 soundfonts out there?

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I use a custom soundfont cobbled together from a number of parts, with its base being the Papelmedia soundfont. The percussion in my soundfont is a bit more "forward" than in the SC-55 soundfont, and has a more clear differentiation between the various drum kits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8tIx4jXXeE
Descent menu music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG3M80W0Bd0
Apogee fanfare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Qqy8hw9wQ
Wolfenstein E1M1 (direct IMF conversion, which I arranged myself)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejKVFx_Vjjs
Spear of Destiny MAP01 (ditto)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-s6w0MyxEU
Planet Strike MAP20 (ditto)

http://www.sendspace.com/file/3e211o
Whispers of Satan MAP07

Oddly enough, the only midis that really sound wrong on it are the Back to Saturn X midis. No others, just them.

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esselfortium said:

WeedsGM is really terrible.

The usual SoundCanvas-based instruments typically sound more cohesive and represent the music better than any of the "improved" alternatives I've tried using.


I can agree with that.

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