Sound fonts

Sound fonts are used by most software synthesizers for MIDI playback. There are three main formats as far as ZDoom is concerned:

DLS, or Downloadable Sounds, the standard backed by the MIDI Manufacturers Association. The TiMidity++ synthesizer can use them.
SF2, developed by Creative. The TiMidity++ and FluidSynth synthesizers use them.
PAT, or instrument patches. (Technically not a sound font since they are separate files.) The TiMidity++ synthesizer uses them.

This article is a stub. Please help the ZDoom Wiki by adding to it.

The choice of a sound font determines the quality of the MIDI playback.

Forum threads

"MIDI soundfont menu mod" - How to create a custom menu to quickly change which sound font to use.
"Music source" - discussion on everyone's favorite choice of software synthesizer and sound fonts.
"Best SoundFont for Doom?" - a similar, and larger, thread to the previous
"Recommend Me Some Great GM Sounfonts" - another such thread
"Weeds General MIDI SoundFont v3.0" - presenting a sound font created with Doom and other classic games in mind
"Cannot get .sf2 to work!" - might contain useful troubleshooting advice if you have the same problem as the thread starter

SKArk - a utility to uncompress .sfark files into .sf2 files
SFPack - a utility to uncompress .sfpack files into .sf2 files
FluidSynth soundfont page - contains many useful links
EAWPats at Doomworld/idgames - can be used with TiMidity++ to emulate a Gravis Ultrasound
8MBGM and 8MBGSFX Gravis Patch Set v1.3 at Doomworld/idgames - another set of GUS-emulating patches
GUS Patches at Doomworld/idgames - the actual deal, along with a few extras
Debian Fluid R3 package page - once extracted from the ".orig.tar.gz" archive, the SF2 files can be used on any system, not just on Debian

This article is issued from Zdoom. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.