Soundfonts with Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Card with Windows 7

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PhilihP

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I recently purchased a new Dell computer with Windows 7. I have a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCIe Sound card that I want to use with Soundfonts. The sound font software doesn’t come with the card and Dell wants $60 for it. I’d like to pay less.

Question: What software do I buy to use SOUNDFONTS with the Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCIe sound card with WINDOWS 7?

Thanks, Phil
 
First off, you dont need a Creative card to use soundfonts anymore.

With the short circuit sampler or SFZ soundfont player (both FREE, google them) you can use soundfonts with ANY soundcard.

2) Ditch the gamer Creative card with dodgy drivers and get a real 24-bit ASIO low-latency soundcard instead.

http://www.tweakheadz.com/soundcards_for_the_home_studio.htm
 
This looks like the thing I need "Soundfont Bank Manager" but I don't know how to purchase it.
http://www.creative.com/soundblaster/products/software/subsoft.asp?id=6

If I click on the upper left hand arrow or "software" it takes me to "Creative Media Tool Box"
http://www.creative.com/software/mediatoolbox6/
This doesn't say anything about soundfonts and I don't even think it works with Windows 7 anyway.

I don't think I can even contact the people at Creative unless I take the computer apart and get the serial number off the soundcard which the people at Dell don't seem to know.
 
I wonder how Creative is still in business? I bought a SoundBlaster Live! in 2001, which I still have in my old computer. But when I first built this computer in 2005, I always used the onboard sound card, which has served me well, both on the old motherboard and my current one.

Who has a reason to buy a Soundblaster when motherboards easily support 6.1+?

Not to mention SB's are terrible recording cards as is.
 
PhilihP said:
I recently purchased a new Dell computer with Windows 7. I have a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCIe Sound card that I want to use with Soundfonts. The sound font software doesn’t come with the card and Dell wants $60 for it. I’d like to pay less.

Question: What software do I buy to use SOUNDFONTS with the Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCIe sound card with WINDOWS 7?

Thanks, Phil
Click to expand...

Why on earth would you even want to use SoundFonts????? Its 2010, not 1998.
 
I thought the same thing, but for basic composition I have found that using a VST wrapper to use soundfonts is actually the best way to go to get the General Midi instrument set that actually sounds halfway decent.
 
brzilian said:
Why on earth would you even want to use SoundFonts????? Its 2010, not 1998.
Click to expand...

I'm not the most knowledgable person when it comes to home recording, and it's been 2-3 years since my last song, but I'm ready to go again.

I used soundfonts 5 or 6 years ago until an anti-spyware program I was using completely disabled the soundfonts from my old computer. I thought the soundfonts sounded good and they were inexpensive, many of which were free.

So what's wrong with soundfonts???
 
PhilihP said:
So what's wrong with soundfonts???
Click to expand...

Any modern day DAW app will ship with a sample playback softsynth that will have much better sound quality.

Cakewalk includes the Roland TTS-1 softsynth with both Sonar and Home Studio. Apple's Garage Band rivals most sample playback hardware synths made in the 2000's and the EXS24 softsynth that comes with Apple's Logic Express and Studio drove me to sell my Motif several years ago.
 
Soundfounts are alive yet

I think musicians has much more to do yet with soundfont technology than simply to have some patches, example we can record parts of our singing and assign this to a key or play it from the secuencer o say jokes and play sound effects in realtime or maybe your friend have a nice sound and you can record it and make it a soundfont, besides the cards like the soundblaster live gives more estability and power and if you use the kx drivers instead of defaults you can get some very good efects for the microphone also. I recomend it to use as default besides vsti and other virtual instrumentes along with your real instrument of course :)
 
brzilian said:
Why on earth would you even want to use SoundFonts????? Its 2010, not 1998.
Click to expand...


Nothing wrong with soundfonts.

True, they been around for a long time.
But its just a container for .wav files

Cars have been around since 1900, but you still use 'em.
Dont be distracted by the shiny...
 
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