Soundfont for 2.0

There have been some concerns with FluidR3 for the 2.0 release - pops caused by some bad interaction with the sf3 version and libsndfile, other artifacts in muted trumpet and tuba sounds, lower overall volume level, balancing issues, short notes sounding too quiet for some instruments (eg, violin) because of the slow attack, maybe others I've forgotten.

Much as I like FluidR3 overall, I'm certainly sensitive to these concerns. But it's not clear to me how much control we have over some of this. And it seems that if any significant effort is going to go into soundfont tweaking for 2.0, we should start really getting a handle on what is going to be involved. There has been some discussion of these issues, and even some PR's submitted for of this, but I want to make sure we are covering all the bases we need to cover. Hence this thread.

FWIW, I periodically download various other free GM soundfonts to compare with FluidR3 to see if there is anything else we should be considering. So far, I still haven't found one that I think is better in enough respects to be worth considering shipping instead. I *will* say that Timbres of Heaven shows the most promise of anything I've heard. It sounds quite good overall, and I'm guessing it uses normalized samples, as it comes off as noticeably louder than FluidR3 for the same Mixer settings. it has at least as many balance issues that would need correcting, and the slow attacks are even more problematic than in FluidR3 in terms of making short notes too quiet. Unfortunately, the slow attack in these two soundfonts is an important part what makes them so attractive otherwise - it means things can sound reasonably legato by default That's the Achilles heel of so many other soundfonts in an environment where we don't have a way to suppress attacks for legato passages. But perhaps some sort of compromise could be found. Also, the license for Timbres of Heaven is too restrictive, although that might be negotiable if we thought fixing the issues with Timbres of Heaven was a better way to go than fixing the issues with Fluid3.

And I'm still curious about other alternatives. Three that come up pretty often I personally think would *not* be options for us. GeneralUserGS sounds fine for its size, but is pretty weak on most wind intruments (weak in the sense of artificial-sounding, not balance). Similar for Arachno, plus it really is pretty bad in overall balance for the scores I have tried it with. Sonatina Symphonic is not even close to GM compatible.