Downloadable Sounds

May 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Jennifer Hruska

           
 

The number of hardware and software synthesizers that support SoundFonts and DLS is rapidly growing, no doubt due to the synthesis power that they can generate at such an attractive price. Some of the more popular sound card-based synthesizers supporting SoundFonts are the Creative Labs Live card, the E-mu Audio Production Studio (APS), and the EWS64 line of TerraTec cards (very popular in Europe). These cards have much higher specs than the older models do and often include studio-quality A/D/A converters, balanced analog I/O, S/PDIF I/O, and high-quality stereo and surround-sound effects. For DLS-supported sound cards, check out the Turtle Beach Montego II, the Yamaha 192XG, and the TerraTec line.

Software-based synths and samplers are convenient because they interface with whatever audio output device you have on your computer without requiring additional hardware. Seer Systems (www.seersystems.com) makes two such Windows products: Reality ($379), a full-featured synthesizer with sampling options that supports SoundFonts; and SurReal ($99), a lower-cost, scaled-back version of Reality. Unity DS-1 ($449) from BitHeadz (www.bitheadz.com) is another SoundFont-compatible software sampler that runs on Macs and PCs, and NemeSys (www.nemesysmusic.com) has announced that its new GigaStudio software sampler will support SoundFonts as well. DLS software synths include MIDI Wave Lite ($49) by Galileo Designs (www.galileodesigns.com) and Microsoft's DirectMusic synthesizer, a component of DirectX 6.1 (built into newer Windows operating systems).

Downloadable sounds can also be used in your external hardware sampler. With a converter such as ChickenSystems' Translator (www .chickensys.com), you can convert a SoundFont to a format that Kurzweil, Ensoniq, Akai, Roland, and other samplers are able to read. You can also convert sounds from those hardware formats to SoundFonts and perform other types of conversions.

FIG. 2: SoundFont support is beginning to show up in modern sequencers. Here, the SoundFont bank manager appears inside Cakewalk’s Pro Audio.

Using SoundFonts in a recording situation has become easy with SoundFont support from both Cakewalk's Pro Audio and Steinberg's Cubase digital audio sequencers. If your sound card is SoundFont-compatible, you simply load a SoundFont bank directly from your sequencer and select your SoundFont instrument in the Track window (see Fig. 2). The process couldn't be easier. Of course, you can play a sound-card synth loaded with downloadable sounds using any sequencer, but not all sequencers support the format as directly as these two.

SoundFont libraries are proliferating as the format gains popularity. Among the many current producers of SoundFonts are Creative Labs, E-mu/Ensoniq (www.emu.com), and SonidoMedia (www.sonidomedia.com). You can also find free SoundFonts on the Web, but their quality is not always guaranteed. Most of the companies mentioned here include product demos on their Web sites so that you can hear what you're getting before you buy.

DLS sound libraries are more difficult to find, but programs such as Awave and Audio Compositor allow you to open a SoundFont and save it as a DLS Level 1 or DLS Level 2 file. Be aware, however, that when you convert from a SoundFont to a DLS Level 1 file, you lose any filtering or layering programmed into the SoundFont patch.

SOUNDFONTS AND DLS FILES
Creating music using SoundFonts and DLS is just like creating music with any type of sound hardware: all you really need is a MIDI controller or a sequencer and the hardware (or software sampler) that plays the selected sounds. Although you can use any sequencer, you'll probably find the task to be faster and easier with a program that can address the sound banks internally.

How you load SoundFonts or DLS sounds depends on the hardware or the software sampler you're working with. Some sound cards have factory-or user-installed RAM into which you can load your sounds, but most use your computer's RAM to store the sample data when you access it. The more system RAM you have, the more downloadable sounds you can load at one time. When you're not sampling, the system RAM is available for other applications. (Some cards load sounds into RAM at startup. Check with the manufacturer to see which method your card uses.)

FIG. 3: Most sound cards are bundled with software for managing downloadable sounds. The E-mu APS SoundFont Bank Manager, shown here, lets you select a sound bank and preview the ­Presets that it contains.

In Fig. 3, we see the screen from which you select the SoundFont file that loads into the E-mu APS card when you start your computer. Simply click the Browse button to locate all of the sounds on your system, then choose the one that you want. You can preview the sounds in the bank using the onscreen keyboard and modify other card settings as well. Loading downloadable sounds is relatively simple; the product manual should explain it all.

FONT OF WISDOM
As the industry takes hold of downloadable formats, we will see them become even better integrated with audio software. Some of the leading MIDI sequencer developers are already working toward routing plug-in effects onto SoundFont and DLS tracks. Keyboard synth manufacturers are discussing direct support for these formats because of their growing popularity and available libraries. If you're seeking new sonic resources for your music productions, be sure to check out downloadable sounds.