K.O.R. Soundfont Project

• Feb 25, 2018 - 06:52

I through some unknown urge I have started up a soundfont project.
The goal is to have the best possible midi sound that can come out of a synthesizer. Size is not of any concern for me, quality is my only goal! (actually there's several goals but I'll get to that)
For this project I'm working on making sf2 files bassmidi compatible. Mostly so they will work with Zoltan's excellent program, Falcosoft MidiPlayer, but I've also tested a bet to make sure it works in musescore as well. It works well but I think I'm running into a max voices limit or something when it plays more complicated songs. I'm pretty new at this soundfont thing, so I've probably made a number of mistakes. Feel free to let me know what I need to fix.

THE LICENSE
I've only used samples from places with compatible licenses to CC Share Alike, most were GPL with a exception to allow the music made from this to be sold for $$$.
What does this mean? Do what you want with this, You can also make your own version of this soundfont, as long as you license it in a similar manner.

THE FORMATS
I'm releasing these in two formats, SF2 and SFOGG. SF2 is uncompressed and very large, this is basically the "sourcecode" for the thing. SFOGG is a custom format used by FalcoSoft MIDIPlayer. It's WAAAAY smaller for 95% the same quality. I will release a program that converts sf2 to sfogg later. (still figuring out how to compile bassmidi in windows)

THE K.O.R. SOUNDFONT PACK V.1.0
This is a GM complete and tuned soundfont that I've tried to somewhat model after how the Roland SC-VA sounds, but using real instrument samples whenever possible. Most of the synth sounds are also based off of real instruments, cept for ones that were not meant to emulate a particular instrument or real world sound. (Saw Wave, Square Wave, etc...) Those ones were left mostly alone.
I've tested this mostly for Orchestrated music as well as a bit of power metal. This should give a distinct sound that should work well with most games that use General MIDI for music. (Tyrian, Decent, DOOM, WarCraft, Duke Nukem 3D, FF7, etc...).

Here is the link to the forum page with the up to date links: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=57273

Comments

• Feb 26, 2018 - 16:41

Thanks, i found 8 good instruments (meaning better than what i already have) that i extracted from your soundfont file, and added to my library.

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• Feb 26, 2018 - 17:11

Thanks for doing this! FWIW, MuseScore uses its own compressed version of SF2, we call it SF3, you might consider looking at making an SF3 version as well. There is already a program to convert, I think somewhere in the MuseScore source on GitHub.

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 02:33

I'm checking out the SF3 format now, thanks for letting me know.
I also tested Musescore a bit more, it seems like it doesn't like how many samples I used for some of the instruments. I'm working on a rewrite on those ones, but that's not gonna be done any time soon. Does anyone know if there's a way to increase how many voices it can play at once? (Most let me set the limit to 999, which I need to do for some songs)

Edit
I finished making a SF3 Version for those who want to check it out. It doesn't seem to let me edit the original post anymore for some reason.
https://downloads.kor.ninja/Music/korfontproject/KOR%20Soundfont%20-%20…

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 14:15

i had a peek inside your soundfont, bank 2, strings and trombone
the strings preset has 5 instruments (1 stereo), the trombone 14, all set to the full range velocity, so when you play one note on the strings, the synth produces 6 voices, for one note on the trombone 14.
i think that is the problem of the many voices.
regards, bottrop

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• Feb 27, 2018 - 21:58

Bright Trombone 2:57, I missed that one, it was one of the presets that were messed up when I converted it from sfz. And I thought I got them all. Thanks.
The Strings one has a different instrument for each voice, this is an approach that's been used for many of the presets used. I plan on going through all the orchestrated presets to try and reduce this a bit. I've already done this for the guitars.
This will have to wait for a bit though as that will take a lot of work, and I'll possible have to do some weird trickery with it.

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• Feb 28, 2018 - 19:50

hi Clint, i checked your String Ensemble in bank 0, this preset has 17 instruments, in the octave around middleC 14 instruments are permanently in use, at the highest velocity all 17, they are all stereo, so that means 34 voices for every single tone!
apart from the madness of stereo samples; what acoustics are we supposed to hear? a mix of 17 concerthalls?
a soundfont should be elegant, slim and agile, Music is a woman, not the Titanic.
regards, bottrop

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• Feb 28, 2018 - 23:23

To be more precise it's 17 different instruments in 17 different concerthalls all mixed into one.
It for the most part uses the same samples as the individual instruments. By mixing it this way it's supposed to make it sound more realistic. The samples are stereo because they're panned to their respective position in a concerthall.
Is this all ludicrous and pointlessly titanic? Yes, but baby, some guys just like 'em BIG!

But you do have a point, and this is what I was stating earlier that I needed to redo. The converted SFZ settings from VPO 2.1 doesn't quite work the way I'd like here.

Also I do want to mixdown all the samples to Mono, but I have yet to figure out a way to do that with polyphone.

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• Apr 11, 2018 - 08:56

Thanks again for the tips. I've reworked the String Ensemble, now it's much simpler and sounds mostly the same. I've done this for a large number of other presets as well.

MuseScore still gets a little choppy with more complicated songs, but it runs 95% of the songs I've tested with no problems.

SF2 - https://downloads.kor.ninja/Music/korfontproject/KOR%20Soundfont%20-%20…
SF3 - https://downloads.kor.ninja/Music/korfontproject/KOR%20Soundfont%20-%20…

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• Mar 14, 2018 - 10:20

New version has been released of the KOR Complete Soundfont.
more info is at the Vogon forum... https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=57273

This should slightly decrease the amount of voices used. I fixed a tone of issues with the missing velocity settings for several Brass and Woodwind instruments. Had to replace the BaritoneSax instrument I was using because it was too big (and poorly coded), but DAMN did it sound good, I'll probably find some way to shove it back in.
I made sure to add a sf3 format as well

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• Jun 30, 2018 - 15:32

I'm at version 3.1 now. My testing has shown that all issues when using with Musescore seem to have been resolved. Musescore 2.2 or greater is strongly recommended for this soundfont.
I have greatly simplified the soundfont to help it use less resources and to be able to include all the fancy samples I've collected. Now it's 1.92gb for everything instead of the 4.3gb that it was at one point.
Also added a ton of velocity tweaks to give the instruments a realistic edge to them.
Still available as a SF3 file. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=57273

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• May 18, 2019 - 13:30

There anyway I can get a admin to remove the old links from the first post?
Those links are no longer valid. I'd recommend just linking to the post I have on the Vogon's forum... https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=57273
I'm working on a fairly big update to my Orchestra soundfont, that should be done in a day or two. The rest is on version 4.76 now. I've also made a .sf3 version of my GM Tiny soundfont, that should work better on lowerend machines that don't have the grunt for the full version.

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