Synthfont alternatives

[Mr. Freeze]

My version of Synthfont won't play anything. Every time I tell it to play, it seizes up and says "Failed to start rendering engine!"

Are there any alternatives to Synthfont?

[AndrewB]

A program gives you one error message and you decide to abandon it and move on? I wonder what you're like in a relationship...

"Honey I missed the carpool home today. Can you come pick me up?"
"Nah I'll just find another girlfriend."

[printz]

AndrewB said:

A program gives you one error message and you decide to abandon it and move on? I wonder what you're like in a relationship...

"Honey I missed the carpool home today. Can you come pick me up?"
"Nah I'll just find another girlfriend."

Maybe the error is systematic on his computer?

[Ralphis]

What's the worst that could happen? An executable is emotionally destroyed? I can live with that.

[GreyGhost]

Which version of Synthfont? Which version of Windows? Have you checked this forum?

[Aliotroph?]

Indeed. Synthfont updates have been fast and furious recently. The biggest change I've noticed is stability. About three updates previous I was getting nonstop BSODs from it. They're largely gone now. This sounds like it's worth troubleshooting some more.

To answer the original question, I haven't yet found another tool that does what Synthfont does quite as well. There's a thread around here about faking an FM MIDI setup with a soundfont. It uses a VST that plays soundfonts, but it's not as robust.

Here's that thread. Depending on what you were doing with Synthfont, this may be completely inadequate.

[Super Jamie]

What do you want to achieve?

If you just want to play MIDIs or Doom music with soundfonts, how about Timidity? It's a bit of a pest to get working with Windows, and apparently you need some special version for ZDoom, but it does have that functionality.

I sat down one day and got all those MIDI Yoke tricks and "OPL-like" soundfonts going from the thread linked to above, and I found they all provided a less-than-optimal music experience. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they all downright sucked.

If I want to hear good OPL music, I use ZDoom's OPL emulator or DOSBox's OPL emulator. I have an old DOS box with an SB16 and OPL3 but the crappy little amp circuits on old soundcards make the music less clear than modern software emulation through my Audigy. Anyone who says software emulation of OPL sucks is just plain wrong.

For IWAD music in PrBoom and PrB+ I have taken the FLACs which LogicDeLuxe made of the Doom music with his Roland hardware synth and converted them to OGG. There are settings in prboom.cfg to play these, you can find LDL's FLAC torrents on Pirate Bay.

For custom MIDI tracks in PWADs I use Timidity with eawpats, a patch set (like a soundfont but lots of little files) which you can find on idgames. I'll sometimes switch to an alternate set called "shompats", if you Google for that you'll find his webpage in Japanese or I've discussed it in other threads here.

I'm in the middle of reconstructing the old GUS patches with a bunch of old Linux nerd fixes and extensions which you find in Timidity config files, however I think the aim of eawpats is to be this or better so I'm probably wasting my time.

If you want to run sourceport music through VST I've never done that so sorry for blabbering.