Soundfonts...what's been your experience

  • Thread starter Thread starter Shaky Tee
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Shaky Tee

Between being and nothing
I've started using Soundfonts in my recordings, so as I don't sound so, er, MIDIish. To be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I need a HELL OF A LOT of memory to run them via Cakewalk, and I kinda miss the auto reverb I get with my MIDI drive. On top of that, some of my songs STILL sound kinda computery.

Anyway, my latest song was done with a Piano Soundfont. Waddya think?

http://www.mp3.com/ShakyTee

Also, have you used soundfonts? If so, what has it been like for you?
 
Shaky Tee,

What Sound Fonts are you using? The free ones are of widely varying quality. I've found some good ones. The ratings on the Hammersound website http://listen.to/HammerSound seem to be pretty accurate. I also like what I've heard of the Sonic Implants ones:

http://www.sonicimplants.com/

(I have the Industrial Dance PC set) but they are a tad pricey. Though compared to comparable sound sets for "real" samplers, they're cheap as hell.

I like the sound of the piano on "Silicon Valley Blues." Certainly sounds wa-a-a-ay better than the one on "It Ain't Over ('Til I Say It's Over)." By the way, I like the sound of your voice, but it seems to be recorded somewhat poorly. (Unless that's the encoding into MP3 at work). Are you using a Sound Blaster Live for recording? What kind of mic?

-AlChuck
 
Hey Al!!

Thanks for the response!!

The soundfont I used was the piano soundfont I got from sonicimplants.com. I guess the change was so startling to my ears that I initially was a little turned off. I guess I'm used to the auto reverb that the strict MIDI driver I had been using gives me. With soundfonts, I have to record the file to a wave, then add reverb to it.

Which is okay, I guess. More room to move.

This kinda tells me that I need to do some more experimentation. I also just purchased some horn soundfonts from them

I agree about the free ones varying in quality. I'll go check out Hammersound.com. It looks cool!

The vocals were recorded on an Oktava MK-319 condenser mic. It was run through my Behringer MX802A mixer, and straight into my Soundblaster Live card. I don't like the way the vocals were recorded either. I should have switched on that -10dB switch, and I think the compression did me in.

Like I said, at some point I'll redo this. I like this mic. For the most part, it hasn't done me wrong YET!
 
Hi Shaky Tee,

I see you already know about Sonic Implants. Was that the piano from the 24 MB GM set that they sell?

I guess I didn't realize that you can't apply the reverb from the SB Live's DSP to Sound Fonts... I thought you could, but I usually don't use it anyway, and I've only had my DAW together for a little over two months and only get to spend about 3-4 hours a week actually using it.

I've heard good stuff about that Oktava mic. I have a RODE NT-1, and it seems to work well. I only sing for a joke occasionally, I have it more for recording acoustic guitar, percussion, and perhaps the occasional singer or flute or sax player I might be able to coax into laying down some real parts some day. I'm mainly an electric guitar player so I have it easy -- I just plug in to my POD and go.

I also have one of those Behringer Eurorack mixers, the MX1604A, like yours but with a few more channels. I wonder if a better preamp might help improve the sound of the vocals? Maybe one of those ART MP-1 tube mic pres? Or maybe one of those tube-warmth-simulating DirectX plugins?

-AlChuck
 
Ain't that POD a savior?

I have an ART Tube MP and it's definately a lot warmer than the mic pres I was using previously (the stock ones on my tascam 4-track)

I use a lot of soundfonts in my music because I don't have any modules or a sampler. Like others have said above, some are good, some are bad. I haven't yet tried it, but there's a program that can take Akai samples and convert them to soundfonts. Maybe you can try that out.

Good luck

[Edited by MrLip on 08-24-2000 at 23:32]
 
Reverb

Shaky

Hi there!

To get reverb on your MIDI stuff in Cake9 with a SBLive card, you gotta do a couple of things.

Bring up the "Environmental Audio" part of your sblive. On the "master" tab, select "effect-reverb", and make sure that the slider is above zero. That sets your maximum amount of reverb effect, I set mine for 50%.

If you select the "MIDI" tab, you'll notice that reverb on your MIDI is tied to controller 91 (or should be, anyway). That means a controller 91 message has to be sent in your sequence to set the amount of reverb for MIDI on a particular channel. The easy way to set reverb in your MIDI stuff in Cakewalk is in the console view. If you bring up the console view, you should have reverb and chorus sliders(as a default) for each MIDI channel. That's where you set the reverb amount for each MIDI channel. They send controller 91 messages for what you have set, each time you start play.

Shouldn't make any diff if it's an external soundfont or default soundfont, as far as reverb. Check all this stuff, and you should be in business.

By the way, you may not wanna fool with alla this.
You get much better control by recording the MIDI stuff as WAV's and using DX effects on the audio.
 
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