OmegaGMGS2 GM, GM2, XG, and Roland GS custom soundfont by Rick Simon

• May 1, 2016 - 22:22

Hey everyone,

I, like many others, love midi songs but have always thought soundfonts were a mixed bag. Some sound amazing on certain instruments, but horrible on others. I have every free bank that is available and have tried free and commercial soundfonts. Other issues I ran into:

-Soundfonts are only GM compatible, so Roland GS, Yamaha XG, or General Midi 2 songs will not playback correctly.
-Low quality samples
-Bad balance
-Mish-moshed presets that sound good individually at times, but horrible in a mix.

So I made my own custom soundfont, OmegaGMGS2. I made it back in 2001 and have updated it periodically over the years. I am offering my soundfont to everyone...completely free of charge!

OmegaGMGS2 specs:

-GM, GM2, Yamaha XG, and Roland GS compatible (can playback any midi song in these formats!)
-45 Drum Kits (including Yamaha XG and Roland GS sets)
-24-Bit quality samples
-Variation sounds
-Currently only 119 MB in size!

To check out my Youtube videos featuring OmegaGMGS2: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEDf46ddvcvNpGLvNhzNSGQ

For my SoundCloud (featuring a lot of midi files using OmegaGMGS2: https://soundcloud.com/rick-simon-828789564/tracks

And finally, to download OmegaGMGS2, go here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/2as606szvw1pbw8/OmegaGMGS2.sf2

Compare this to any soundfonts you own or that are available and please let me know what you think. I will let you judge for yourself.

All I ask: Please give credit where it is due. The soundfont has a lot of time, heart, and trial and error invested. If you use it to make a soundfont, or for productions, please give credit to me, Rick Simon.

Please enjoy!


Comments

Good job !
I personally don't use GM but individual sf2's on each track in my DAW.
I have extracted from your bank (with sf2splitter) my very favourites:
Elpiano2, Hammond organ, Bandoneon, PickedBass, Distorsion guitar, the "cinematic" Slow strings, the Brass section(best one on the free market), Halo and Ambient Sweep pads, 1 jazz and 2 standart drumkits, and will certainly happily use them (not professionally) from now on.
Thanks !

dude! thanks a mil' !!!!
loving this soundfont especially the brass instruments (trumpets) and strings!
i tend to overdo it with exclamation marks but i hope the sentiment carrys through lol!
PS - how much reverb etc should i apply to make eg. a symphonic piece sound more 'natural/real'

again;
Great Job dude!

I wish to express my appreciation & congratulations for your soundfont, basically the most efficient & most beautiful sounding (to me) from a whole bunch of soundfonts, many much bigger than this. While I encourage you to keep tinkering with it, this soundfont is some outstanding work already.

R :)

i use QMidi (Mac) and i added your sf2 to the folder music device but it don't works fine, after easy open and saving on polyphone works :-)

Just a question, is it possible the "volume" of Standard Drums to increment it? thx

Anonymous
Jun 8, 2017 - 19:55

Thanks very much. I just fired Sonatina and SM for failing to show up. Arachno showed...but...oh well...all nice fellows though...LOL

Rick Simon said in a comment on one of his youtube videos that most of the presets in his OmegaGMGS2.sf2 soundfont are samples from other free soundfonts he found on the internet, but he also said that some of the samples he used were from his hardware synths like his Korg and his Roland FA, so you can safely assume that this sounfont is totally illegal.

here was the comments

Jeffrey Baitis11 months ago
@Rick Simon, this is really great. Thank you for compiling this. Do you have any information about the licensing of this soundfont?
Reply
Rick Simon
Rick Simon11 months ago
Thank you and your welcome about the compiling. As far as licensing, do you mean the song itself or the soundfont? If the song, the original composer would be the one the ask about that (and likely impossible to find). As for my soundfont, some of the samples are from hardware, such as the Korg Triton, Sound Canvas, and the Roland FA-06. Most of the presets are from free soundfonts I have collected over the years. So for licensing, I would say fair use and commercial would not be out of the question, just please give credit where it is due is all I ask. If you could elaborate a little more, I can give you a more specific answer to your question.
Read more

here is the video where he comments, look in the comments below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkXu6_HJ_rE

In reply to by dmusicman

> you can safely assume that this sounfont is totally illegal

No, that's not how law works. There is nothing "illegal". Breach of copyright in this particular case isn't a crime or a felony, but might be grounds for a civil plaint which is highly unlikely in this case. In most cases actions like these must be treated with a "Cease and desist" order prior to attempting trial.

Incidentally, that's also not how copyright works, especially with samples in a musical product like a keyboard.

All of these sounds are completely free to use for derivative works, they are specifically licensed to be so. The only thing that is usually forbidden is creating derivative products that compete with original product such as sample libraries.

So while the act of creating and distributing this soundfont is technically in breach of copyright, making your own music with these samples still fits in the blanket license that covers them as free to use in derivative works.

Finally, samples in GM soundfonts are rarely of the quality needed for use in professional music production. Most people (myself included) are using something like this to listen/preview MIDI files in media players on their computers. That's about as fair use case as can be.

Hey Rick!,
Where did you get the patch "Atmosphere" from?
It sounds really nice and i want to know if you sampled it from any keyboard...
If it came from a keyboard, what brand and or model did it come from...
if not, do you have the individual samples (From lowest note to highest note) from the patch?

Hello.
I thought this soundfont was xg compatible. But when I tried "Cybergate" by David J Reading it played completely wrong. I will also try the Roland gs, but something needs to be changed on the Yamaha xg. A second example is "Galactic Invasion" by David J Reading. The first notes were quite good. Then, when a finger snap was supposed to be played. It wasn't there. That's a shame. Maybe you should take an example from "ColomboGmGS which supports gm, gm2, gs and Xg. Even Tyros, xf and psr demos are supported. I hope they will change your soundfont.
Best regards

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