Does EMU or M-Audio Cards support Soundfonts?

ORIGINAL: walrusman

I can't seem to find any information on soundfont support for audio cards other than soundblaster. I'm interested in the M-Audio 2496 PCI and the E-MU 0404 Cards, but they don't mention whether or not they support soundfonts. Can anyone clear this up for me? Thanks!

That's not the way MIDI sounds work now, the sound card doesn't need to be a synth. If you want to use soundfonts all you need is a soundfont player software synth (DXi or VSTi). Do a google search or search on this forum and you will find one, there may even be a free one.

ORIGINAL: walrusman

ORIGINAL: ohhey

ORIGINAL: walrusman

I can't seem to find any information on soundfont support for audio cards other than soundblaster. I'm interested in the M-Audio 2496 PCI and the E-MU 0404 Cards, but they don't mention whether or not they support soundfonts. Can anyone clear this up for me? Thanks!

That's not the way MIDI sounds work now, the sound card doesn't need to be a synth. If you want to use soundfonts all you need is a soundfont player software synth (DXi or VSTi). Do a google search or search on this forum and you will find one, there may even be a free one.

I knew I was missing something. Thanks. Does it matter how old the soundfont is?

I don't think so, a soundfont player should be able to use any of them.

ORIGINAL: walrusman

Ok, after doing some reading I'm a little confused. Apparently the software synths can hog CPU cycles, whereas the hardware synths do not. This can result in cracks and pops in audio since the software synth is higher in priority - in terms of the CPU processing. Obviously depending on your CPU speed and I guess how much MIDI you might have going. Why would the market go this direction? This seems like a step backwards.

Now, granted, I still don't have a real handle on this software synth / soundfont thing, but this is rather disappointing. I want to upgrade from my silly soundblaster to a real audio card - but I'm going to sacrifice performance to do that. That's ridiculous to me. And I'm not entirely sure what kind of software synth I should get. And I don't know how that would work with cakewalk home studio.

Furthermore, when I read up on EMU's website, they only mention a handful of software synths that are compatible - and they were all just different versions of Cakewalk software - none of them being Home Studio of course.

This just smells bad. Soundfonts are all over the place and are readily and easily accessible for cheapo soundblaster users. But then for higher end cards, it's suddenly a big pain, requiring more software and money and an inferior implementation? That's just wierd. What am I not getting here?

No, that's not the real story. cracks and pops don't happen if you have good system and a simple sound font player will not hog the CPU any more then one effects plugin. So if your system can't run more then one plugin you can't do a mix on it anyway. Any computer that can run modern recording software like Sonar or Home Studio can run a soundfont player with no problem. You can't even access the sound card sounds now even if you do have them, all the new recording software works with plugins only. The sound card sounds are only for Windows like playing midi files in Media Player and some older games. They have stopped making software like that because most sound cards don't have a synth on board anymore, even the games have their own sound generating engine now, it's an easy task for a modern computer.

Soundfonts are the worst sounds you can use for MIDI playback anyway, they are just cheesey. If you need MIDI file playback you need a good software synth. Sonar comes with the TTS-1 that is as good as the old Roland Sound Canvas the standard in MIDI file playback and the deivce used as a reference to create most MIDI files. If you don't have Sonar you can just buy the Virtual Sound Canvas for about $30. If you have an old sequence that used a sound font that you need to play get the soundfont player and just bounce the track to audio if needed. Then you can remove the soundfont player form the project if you want. Same way with any software synth. Hardware based sounds are just so last century.. nobody does that anymore.

A couple of points.

Sonar 5 Studio Edition comes with "SFZ SoundFont sampler" which is a soundfont softsynth

The current edition of Home Studio 4 comes with Powerfx Dyad DXi sampler & sample library CD which is a SF2 player.

You can also buy the soundfont player that comes with sonar for 60 bucks from the cakewalk online store.

Enough of facts, my personal opinion is that you should get one of those two soundcards no matter what, since they will help you out becuase as the last poster said soundfonts on sound cards are gone :)

Once you have a good soundcard and have a good piece of software (either Homestudio or Sonar) make sure that you don't already have a soundfont soft synth in it, and if not buy the one from Cakewalk (or upgrade your software).

Soon you will find that softsynths are pretty resource light (don't get me wrong, load up a ton of them with effects on all of them and it will eat away cpu) but definitely loading one soundfont player in a project will not be a problem on anything but REALLY crappy machines. You will probably enjoy all of the software synths that come with Sonar or Home studio and then maybe decide to buy some more. Who knows?

Hi ohhey, I hope you don't mind if I jump in but I was wondering if there is any date of the release of gigastudio vst version and how much will it cost us gs ensemble 3 owners to get? You were also talking about how many gs3 samples that you could run thru rewire in sonar so I'll tell my story too. I have a P-4 3.2 with only 512 mhz of ram and I can believe it or not get one drum set (larry Seyer's) as well as a big Fender P bass and the giga piano (le only) and it does not studder or have any problems at all. I do have more ram on the way but I thought I was doing pretty good with that many instruments. I alway enjoy your posts and learn a lot from you. I just recently (last night) learned how to rewire giga and then convert those trks to audio. Before that I was just sending midi out to giga port 1 and directly sending midi to giga but in that config I couldn't figure how to get the giga instruments mixed down to sonar so your way works flawslessly for me.

I sure appreciate all your knowledge. I have read many others posts as well but yours seem to be exactly what I'm needing to do. I can't believe how easy it is to use giga with sonar. Another user was wondering how to seperate drums on different trks well all I do is mute all parts of the drums except one and then I mix that down in sonar to audio and I do that with each piece of the kit and viola all drums are on individual trks in sonar and then I can edit at will.

Bob

I have an M-Audio sound card and play my soundfonts through the SFZ SoundFont sampler with good results.


As for EMU, as far as I am aware they are owned by Creative and therefore, can use soundfonts. I had an older EMU card (APS) and was able to add soundfonts through Sonar and control them with my midi keyboard controller - without using any Soft Synths.