On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Roberto Gordo Saez <roberto.gordo(a)gmail.com Is it just me, or is that site getting compromised way too often? They must run windows server... ;-) -- Christopher Stamper Email: christopherstamper(a)gmail.com Web: http://tinyurl.com/2ooncg gTalk: http://tinyurl.com/6e359r Skype: cdstamper

www.sf2midi.com Been a while, but they had quite a collection back when Shostakovich was a lad. Alex. On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 1:06 AM, lanas <lanas(a)securenet.net> wrote: -- Parchment Studios (It started as a joke...)

Yes, I'm almost sorry i gave a link. The site's not what it was... Alex. On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 2:09 AM, lanas <lanas(a)securenet.net> wrote: -- Parchment Studios (It started as a joke...)

I've struggled with this before. Besides the alternatives already mentioned have a look at http://soundfonts.homemusician.net/ http://www.personalcopy.com/sfarkfonts1.htm Therea are a few others I don't remember that Google turns up. The general soundfonts that I found worthwhile were: Fluid (R3), Chorium, Chaos Bank, Music Theory, Unison, RealFont, Merlin (v2.2), Magic (v2). You have to search around, and it's hard to know whether you really found the latest version of the sf. Another option: if you search for famous instrument brands (e.g. Ibanez soundfont, Stratocaster) you will find some really HUGE soundfonts from fans. I faced the following major problems: 1) sf2's are hard to use. Qsynth needs to start a separate engine for every sf2, and Rosegarden for example sees those as different MIDI devices. A complicated setup that's hard to reproduce after a year passes by. 2) software support is poor. Well, on Linux it's almost non-existent. There is the abandoned branch of Swami (the new version doesn't do sf2). There are also some Windows freeware's that run (with problems, crashes etc) under Wine. Merging two soundfonts or creating a custom soundfont is doable but not fun. Despite these shortcomings, I found sf2 and qsynth the only decent alternative. Timidity worked very poorly for me. Fluidsynth doesn't support GUS .pat files, so I couldn't use the freepat project. Any better alternatives, programs, sound formats? -- Dan

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 09:38:34AM +0200, Dan Muresan wrote: Freepats project is currently trying to build soundfonts in sf2 format and better quality samples. It is a harder task than expected, as most free sf2 files are build from samples extracted from commercial synths (korg, yamaha, roland...). For copyright reasons those samples can't be bundled on a free (GPL or CC-BY licensed) soundfont, there were legal problems in the past, see this article by Walt Gregg: http://freepats.zenvoid.org/walt/README.htm I contacted several sf2 authors (from hammersound and other sites), and *nobody* confirmed clearly that their samples were original and could be relicensed. So all must to be recorded from scratch to be sure. So far there are some pianos, http://freepats.zenvoid.org/sf2/acoustic_grand_piano_ydp_20080910.sf2 http://freepats.zenvoid.org/sf2/acoustic_grand_piano_ydp_20080910.txt http://freepats.zenvoid.org/sf2/acoustic_piano_imis_1.sf2 http://freepats.zenvoid.org/sf2/acoustic_grand_piano_ydp_20080910.txt some drums by Marcos Guglielmetti, http://freepats.zenvoid.org/musix/samples/drums/ and other random samples pending to be converted into soundfonts. I am currently working to process some more drums kindly provided by Hartmut Noack, some synthesized sounds and an acoustic classical guitar recorded by myself. The acoustic guitar sf2 is in good progress, it will be released soon, this is a demo: http://zenvoid.org/tmp/classical-guitar-sf2-demo.ogg Note that the freepats web is outdated, most announcements are made in the mailing list.

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 01:10:09PM +0200, Dan Muresan wrote: The mail goal is to create a General MIDI soundfont with a free license, so reusing free samples from free sf2 files seems reasonable to me. But there are almost no free sf2 files out there (free as GPL free). I haven't contacted to the author of the Fluid soundfont yet, if he confirms that all samples are original (not ripped from propietary sources), then one of the main goals of freepats would be fulfilled, which is very good news; then we will continue with other goals like producing a broad collection of new, high quality instruments for softsynths. But given previous experiences I'm skeptical... OK, I'll add a notice in the main page ASAP.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 07:14:19AM +0200, Dan Muresan wrote: They are the latest AFAIK, but sfubar has been replaced with pysf, a python program created by the same author: http://code.google.com/p/pysf/ I mirrored it under freepats tools directory, you can also find it there now. He is in the list and gives very useful support each time we need something implemented. sfubar/pysf are great tools to batch process large soundfonts, pysf can handle high sample rates without problems (unlike the old swami 1) and it is among the very few utilities that support the 2.4 version of sf2 files, so it is currently my first choice to build sf2 files.

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 05:34:20PM -0500, lanas wrote: Hello. Well... I'm not sure :-P Looks like a collection of soundfonts from HammerSound, I think they were uploaded by Mark, I found this notice in the README: "Uploaded [...] *possibly* free 8 to 9 year old soundfonts from HammerSound by Thomas Hammer. There are also 2 Piano soundfonts from the HammerSound library as examples for testing and comparing with new soundfonts. Their license is either unclear or non-existant so they are okay to use and *probably* safe to redistribute." Since hammersound is now down, grab a copy of those soundfonts if you want to keep them, I think I will eventually get rid of all "possibly free" content in the archive.

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 09:15:20AM +0000, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: It looks that you haven't been sued yet ;-) Yes, it is completely stupid, but I was once "kindly" contacted by a company for using their samples contained in the ROM of a synth in a soundfont and I really have not the time and effort to find if that is a legally valid claim or not. They claim that you don't hold the copyright on the samples, you hold the copyright on the composition, which is a derivative work from the samples. The manufacturer gives you a nonexclusive permission to use their samples in the resulting work, usually royalty free... The exact terms vary between manufacturers, but usually they forbid to use the samples in isolation. See this example (real, from an EULA): "Use of the sound samples in isolation such as, but not limited to, video game soundtracks, gaming machines, toys (where they appear in isolation or as sound effects) is not permitted without first obtaining a separate written License (which may not be available) from Licensor."