newbie MIDI question

Y

Yurdle

New member
I know there's a MIDI forum, but I also know that this is a very newbie question so I'll start here.

Midi files played by my computer sound terrible. The instruments are very fake sounding like a bad casio keyboard.

There was a time where I would completely blame it on my soundcard and buy a much more expensive one to get better sounds, but as far as I can tell there are now things called sound-fonts.

At least, that's what I think they're called. as far as I can tell, they're downloadable sounds that can be played via midi. Right?

Okay, so how do they work? Can any sound card and midi software make them work? Are they any good? Are they free? Where can I get them? How do I install them? Do they really sound like the instrument instead of like a bad keyboard?

I've got a really cheap trident sound card. Can somebody help me make my midi files sound more real without having to buy a new card?

Thanks
 
...sound-fonts... as far as I can tell, they're downloadable sounds that can be played via midi. Right?
Okay, so how do they work? Can any sound card and midi software make them work? Are they any good? Are they free? Where can I get them? How do I install them? Do they really sound like the instrument instead of like a bad keyboard?
Click to expand...

You have the right idea. A Sound Font is a audio sample format that was developed by Creative Labs for their Sound Blaster AWE line of cards a few years back. Their later cards (the Live family and the newer Audigy family) also support this feature. Basically they contain audio information (waveforms) and performance data that assigns them to MIDI Note messages, has the attack/sustain/release/decay envelopes, etc. You load it into the SoundBlaster's memory (a ROM chip on the AWE cards, a portion of system memory in the Live and Audigy cards) and have those sounds at your disposal in addition to the default sounds on the card. Alas, only SB cards and a very few others support Sound Fonts directly. I suspect few other manufaturers were willing to license it from Creative Labs, plus there is a similar format called DLS that is potentially a wider standard.

They can be very good in quality if made right. There are many good ones available on the internet, and a few companuies sell sound sets in this format too, notably Sonic Implants. (They have some example MP3 files made with some of their sound sets that you can check out to get an idea of how good they can sound.)

Decent free ones can be found at Hammersound
 
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