Soundfont Librarian

[Krypton17]

Having collected a few sound fonts, now I want to organize my own banks. The Librarian at Creative is not working for me. Either because I have 64 bit machine or because I don't have a compatible sound card - I'm using Synthfont to fake out my computer nicely. Any suggestions for a program that can easily drag and drop among SF2 files to create new ones? I'm not ready for building my own fonts yet, just want to move them around and consolidate files.

I have a windows xt 32 bit and a windows 7 64bit machine.

Thanks,

Mike

[Sherry C]

Hi Mike,

Yeah, Vienna won't work on your machine if you don't have a SB soundcard.

BUT Kenneth Rundt's "Viena" will :) You can get it at his website too (www.synthfont.com) and create your own banks.

You may want to be careful when you're doing that. The .mid format will support bank and patch number information, but the sound that other users will get will only be the same as yours IF they have the exact same setup. The GM standard instruments will apply otherwise.

In other words, if you create a soundfont with nothing but trumpets in the first five patches, you'll have great trumpet sound with those instruments, but if you export a .mid (or .not) for someone else who only has a GM device (eg. the ubiquitous GS Wavetable), then they'll hear various pianos where you hear trumpets. This is not a problem if you'll only be playing the files on your setup, but if you want to share files, you may want to be sure to put each instrument in its "GM" place/patch location.

Welcome to the wonderful world of soundfonts - they do absolutely rock :)

ttfn,
Sherry