The best free piano soundfont

C

canada-paul

New member
I spent a fair amount of time last week looking for and downloading various piano soundfonts, mostly from Hammersound, and this is what I picked up:

SGPn.sfark
LK_Piano.sfark
KawaiStereoGrandDNS.sfark
Maganda_Piano.sfark

Mind you, there were alot more available than this, but these were the ones who's descriptions piqued my interest. In summary:

SGPn: easily the best. Loud, bright and expressive
LK: easily the worst. Dim and thin.
Kawai: Not quite as loud as SG, but perhaps has a slightly better upper register. I thought I noticed some small artifact or clipping at the beginning of some of the notes.
Maganda: For such a massive soundfont it was dismal. It sounds alright, but when compared to the GMidi piano at similar volume levels, the difference was negligible.

If I remember correctly, either the Kawai or Maganda had a definate ring difference (or a difference in the brightness of the samples) starting just below middle C, enough that any melody or pattern played across the note showed it quite clearly.

As the test, I played some simple 2 handed melody, dumped it into a midi track, then copy/pasted 4 times, mapped each track to a different soundfont (including one using the straight ahead GMidi off my SB Live), then solo'd each track to discern any differences.

If anyone has any better suggestions (remember I'm talking free soundfonts here) than the SG I'd be interested in hearing what they are. I would also like to hear what people are using for rock drum soundfonts, as I'm having a helluva time finding anything (as most of the links on Hammersound are "temporarily unavailable").
 
Paul,

> If anyone has any better suggestions (remember I'm talking free soundfonts here) than the SG I'd be interested in hearing what they are. I would also like to hear what people are using for rock drum soundfonts <

There's a very good piano in the Fluid SoundFont. One of my favorite drum sets is the Tama Rock Star (I think that's the name). Both of these are free, and available at the various free SoundFont sites. Another excellent drum set is Sonic Implants' Bluejay set. It was free on their site a while ago, but I think you have to buy it now. As I recall it's pretty cheap, and it's very good.

--Ethan
 
The SG is the best piano font I have found for setting in a mix. I am open to any one elses discoveries.

Ethen, the Drums By Slavo v1.0.SF2 is a great set although basic. I usually use another font for congas and third world sounds. Slavo is on the Hammersound site.
 
about to take the plunge...

two questions:

are the above mentioned soundfonts similar to samples?...so I could trigger that "tama" drum set with my roland kit?

Also, is XL worth the difference in price? I really don't have a need for the "synthesizers" but could utilize an easy sampler. I do mostly "rock/jazz", but do not do anything close to club tracks.
 
Another good one...

Well, to keep this thread alive, I thought I'd mention that I took the time and downloaded the unbelievably large Fluid soundfont (http://www.jazzybee.com/fluid/), and it happened to include the piano sounds for the same keyboard I have, a Yamaha P200.

It actually sounds pretty good, although playing straight from the board itself is more responsive, it does do a pretty good job of simulating the tone.

If you're like me, and you've got only 256meg of RAM and an SB Live! card, you're going to have to peel some of the instruments out of the soundfont before you can use it.

I may end up using this P200 soundfont exclusively, as it matches the sound of my board better than any of the others.
 
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