Where to find soundfonts?

• Jan 23, 2014 - 05:37

I don't know where most people find soundfonts for musescore. If you search for musescore soundfonts in google, it comes up with this: http://musescore.org/en/handbook/soundfont , but that has a really small list and none of them sound that good. The only one that sounds fine is the GeneralUser GS. Is there no where else to get soundfonts?

Is there a way to make the instruments sound real? Has no one made a soundfont using the real instrument sonds?

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• Jan 23, 2014 - 07:10

Not sure which instruments you listened to, but overall, FluidR3 should sound much better then GeneralUserGS, even if a couple of instruments here and there aren't as good.

Anyhow, for finding soundfonts, I suggest you eliminate MuseScore from your search terms. Most sites providing soundfonts have nothing to do with MuseScore; many predate MuseScore. So including that search term eliminates a lot of the sites you'd want to find.

Almost all soundfonts are made by sampling real instruments, btw. The difference is in things like how *well* they are sampled - whether they sample every note or just a handful and then scale them for other frequencies, whether they sample multiple volume levels or just one volume and then scale it for other volumes, whether there are separate samples for tongued versus slurred notes, notes similar for bowed notes, etc. Also the quality of the recording used and a million other variables.

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• Jan 24, 2014 - 00:24

You don't, not without a ton of effort. SFZ is a totally different format than SoundFont (SF2). MuseScore requires SoundFont / SF2 files, not SFZ files.

Now, I'm guessing you might be referring to Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra. If so, someone has already done the hard work of converting it to SF2 format: see this thread:

http://musescore.org/node/20378

And in particular this response where they combined them into one SF2 file:

http://musescore.org/en/node/20378#comment-76014

This is not a GM soundfont, so it is missing many instruments you would expect to be there, and of the instruments that are there, many are at the wrong locations. So it will take some work in the Mixer within MuseScore to make sure all your instruments get the right sounds.

However, in the end I suspect you'll be disappointed. The demo sounds good, but that's almost certainly because it was heavily tweaked in digital audio workstation (DAW) software. Expecting your own scores to sound as good as the demo just because you are using the same soundfont is roughly like expecting your paintings to sound as good as Monet's just because you are using the same brand of paint and brushes.

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