![]() ![]() * SONIVOX 250 MB GS - Formerly commercial. ![]() This one would be nice if half the instruments weren't in the wrong octave. * SONIVOX 24 MB GS - Formerly commercial. This soundfont "has a unique warm/ambient sound and a huge effort has been made to get it as close as possible to the 'balance' of the Roland SoundCanvas and thus ensure correct MIDI playback with nearly all types of music." I don't really like the electric guitars, though I think they're too muddy. There are 4 versions: Default Stereo Panned Percussion (P), Light Edition (P LE), Pianos Enhanced (P PE), and SteroID Percussion (S). * Utopia Live! 2.0 - Another formerly commercial, professional soundfont. * sYnerGi GS - A formerly commercial, professional soundfont that has "Totally balanced instruments the bank will play all standard midi files without any problems with dynamics or otherwise." However, there are playback-breaking flaws (see my _readme.txt linked above). Christian Collins - Another popular free soundfont. Not perfectly well-balanced, but the instruments are very "big" and high quality. * Arachno Soundfont v1.0 by Maxime Abbey - A popular free soundfont optimized for classic DOS games. However, I cannot share it because this one is a commercial product. This soundfont is probably the closest to the Roland SC-55 in terms of balance and consistency, and is one of my favorites. * Voice Crystal 4 MB GM v4.1 by Eye & I Productions - This is a commercial soundfont made by the same company that made the original GUS patches. * 1mgm.sf2 - This is an SF2-compatible version of the classic AWE32 1 MB General MIDI synthesizer. However, there are a few that stand out for varying reasons: Another problem that happens with certain soundfonts is when the Overdriven and Distortion Guitar presets use the same samples, so E1M1 ends up with pretty bad phasing (AWE32's 1 MB GM bank is guilty of this). Even fewer are able to play some of DOOM's more unusual MIDI sections properly (the "DOOM" voice in the intro of DOOM II Map 5 and the marching sounds in DOOM II Map 31 are two effects that a lot of soundfonts and MIDI synthesizers screw up). You'd be surprised at the number of soundfonts that make no attempt to sound balanced or even usable for General MIDI playback. Now, as for recommendations, I'm just going to say that the vast majority of soundfonts are not going to sound "correct" in old games because the instrument balance is inevitably going to get thrown out of whack. ![]() This will probably be helpful for some who are looking for some new soundfonts to try. Guess I'll use the bump to link my soundfonts folder (minus the commercial stuff, of course). ![]()
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