New subject: List of FOSS Sampled Instrument Libraries for musicians - Hand selected and curated

28 May 2021

Hi Paul.
thanks for the answer.  The following is not meant as "told you so!". But I also
want to show, that I care about this subject and made my homework.
...
  sorry, that reply may have sounded a bit grumpy.
it's just a bit irritating
 sometimes to see well-intentioned efforts that seem to miss so many of the
 resources they need to cover in order to give people a full picture. 
And sometimes a well meaning reply is also wrong:
That Aeolus and setBfree are sample-less software synthesizers was not only hinted at
through
" Guest appearances by Aeolus and setBFree :) "
but it also mentioned three times on the website itself. Once under "All software
synthesizers" and then in each individual description.
The samples from pianobook.co.uk all do not fulfill my requirements. See also their terms
and conditions:
https://www.pianobook.co.uk/terms-conditions/
Quote: " You may not sell sample(s), or give away any sample(s) for use by any other
person(s)."
And to anticipate one possible reply: My list is not a matter of what is fair and moral
and possibly enough to make music. It has a 100% clear, law to the letter, no exceptions
approach. I also wrote:
"The strict constraints mean that this list will never be very large. Creating
sampled instruments is a time-consuming and expensive task and is usually undertaken with
the intention of making money from the result, thus not distributing the instrument as
free and open source. This is by no means condemnable, but in this case it is simply not
our topic. "
And finally, from your .sf2 image I can tell at a first glance several well-known illegal
rips, instances where the authors falsely claimed "public domain" and cases
where the license simply do not meet my requirements, the requirements I prominently put
in their own chapter.
For example Florestan is well know copyright infringement, SC55 is already clear that
these are just Roland samples, G-Town is not as free as people like to think, they are
probably worth an entry on my "Other list" (that is linked on the page).
Some of the .sf2 are synthesizer sounds, which I clearly declared "out of
scope", even if they were CC0 sf2.
And maybe they are just bad sounds. As I wrote: "They either have to be of decent
quality, or at least be the only ones of their kind."
For example balafon1.sf2, which I even created an .sfz version from in 2012. However, I
would not recommend that to anyone because I dislike the sound.
So, it is possible that a few of these .sf2 are indeed good fits for my list. And in this
case I welcome any suggestion, as written on the page. However, I require a source that I
can review.
With the risk to sound grumpy as well:
This time my efforts were already ahead. The "full picture" is sadly not as full
as it should be. Not many people have the time, money and skills to produce samples, and
that shows. People are desperate and want every sample-lib to be free and good. But most
of the time they aren't, but yet another EMU Proteus rip, or something like this.
I hope this example of the research-and-elimination process shows why I think I am the
right person to create that list.
Yours,
Nils
On Thu, 27 May 2021 16:48:25 -0600
Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt; wrote:
...
  sorry, that reply may have sounded a bit grumpy.
it's just a bit irritating
 sometimes to see well-intentioned efforts that seem to miss so many of the
 resources they need to cover in order to give people a full picture. >
> here's what i mean.
>
> first, a shot of the pianobook libs i have on my machine - more or less all
> those available in DS format. Just two days, we got a beautiful full
> orchestra lib there (NFO...)
>
> [image: image.png]
>
> next, here's a listing of all the SF2 libs i was able to find that were
> gratis+libre during a big search a couple of years ago. I don't like most
> of these - SF2 is an inadequate format for msot instruments, though it
> works well for percussive sounds:
>
> [image: image.png]
>
>
> On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 4:03 PM Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt;
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 3:44 PM Laborejo Software Suite
&lt;info(a)laborejo.org&gt;
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hello LAUs,
> >>
> >> Here is a list I am working on at the moment that I wanted to share with
> >> you.
> >> I feel like I've written this already in 2012, but some stuff is worth
> >> repeating :)
> >>
> >> https://hilbricht.net/foss-sampled-instruments.html
> >
> >
> > Aeolus and SetBFree are not sampled instruments. They are synthesizers
> > that generate sound from scratch.
> >
> > You;ve also skipped all of the libraries on pianobook.co.uk that are in
> > DecentSampler format, and can thus be played in either DecentSampler
> > (gratis, non-libre) or sfizz (gratis & libre)
> >
> >
> >

Re: [LAU] List of FOSS Sampled Instrument Libraries for musicians - Hand selected and curated