Default soundfont

• Feb 16, 2013 - 19:45

Hi,
I have a suggestion about sound in Musescore. I download nightly releases every week and I have noticed that the default soundfont was changed to Fluid (I use Musescore revision 7968). Unfortunately it has a very unrealistic sounds for guitars and some other instruments. In my opinion even the piano is not very good in it and the previous soundfont was simpler but better.
What was the reason to change the default sounfont?
Maybe Magic Sounfont or General User would be better or some combined Sf file with sounds from several others? I'm not sure about licenses for that soundfonts to be included with some software or edited but I think the default sound must be as good as possible to make a favorable impression on a user.


Comments

A nice project for someone could be posting some (admittedly personal) impressions of which sets of instruments sound best in which soundfont.

Although personal it might give others some idea where to look for sounds they want to use.

In reply to by xavierjazz

IMHO, the best sounds are the following (what I know):
Pianos – pianissimum.sf2
Guitars (nylon, jazz and steel), tenor saxophone (really great here), cello, strings, church organ – MagicSF v.2.0. Nylon guitar it the best here but little bit silent.
Accordion, nylon guitar, basses – chorium.sf2
General User soundfont is also great for orchestral works and has special Musescore edition.
Sounds like marimba, vibraphone or music box are good everywhere :)

Listed sf2 files can be found on these sites:
http://www.hammersound.com/
http://www.personalcopy.com/sfarkfonts1.htm
http://www.schristiancollins.com/generaluser.php

In reply to by xavierjazz

It is real problem because they are distributed as "free" but almost all of them include "some sounds freely available in internet" without understandable and clear license. As I know only GeneralUser soundfont has license agreement...
I'm afraid that most of them are NOT open source or available for distribution with any software.
It would be great to create the new "MuseScore soundfont" from scratch with recording of sounds specially for open source development. But this is extremely difficult task, I know.

In reply to by v-k-mus

How can I set a sound font as default for only an instrument? Like how can I set the piano sound font as the default only for piano but not other instruments? Because when I rank the piano font at the top in the synthesizer it makes all other instruments sound also as piano, but I only want the piano to be that default sound.

In reply to by MOCH

Not sure what you mean by "default" here, but if you just mean, the sound used until you change it further, yousimply put piano at the bottom of the list in the synthesizer (or at least not at the top) then select that sound for piano in View / Mixer. All other sounds will come from the default soundfont. if by "default" you mean you wish other new scores you create to use the same configuration, then I would hope that saving this score to your Templates folder would allow scores created from that template later (by selecting it from the Custom Templates list in File / New) to honor that. If not, the "poor man's template" of simply doing a "Save As" of the source score would certainly worl.

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