Soundfonts

[Zenon]

Yaay, just got FluidSynth working

Anybody got any Soundfonts to recommend?

[esselfortium]

The Roland SoundCanvas soundfont is the only one that I'd trust to not fuck things up, honestly. Doom's music was written for the SoundCanvas sound set, and I'd be willing to bet that most other midis are written either for it or for something based on it (like the standard Windows Midi and QuickTime instrument sets, which are chopped-down, lower-fidelity versions of the SoundCanvas stuff.) In my experience, midis played back with "enhanced" soundfonts tend to sound like garbled messes.

[BouncyTEM]

Alternatively, WeedsGM3. It was made with doom and other old games in mind.

[esselfortium]

Alternatively, WeedsGM3. It was made with doom and other old games in mind.

Actually, WeedsGM3 was the soundfont I had at the forefront of my mind when mentioning ones that make otherwise decent midis sound like total crap. I was astounded when I actually tried it out recently, after having seen it recommended so highly so many times in discussions like this: when testing Back to Saturn X's soundtrack with WeedsGM3, I couldn't find a single midi that didn't get ruined by it. The quality of instrument and drum samples is extremely inconsistent such that they don't fit together very well, the sounds tend to be muddy and frequently step on each other in the mix, and instrument volumes are way off which makes the muddiness of the samples even more problematic.

[BouncyTEM]

Well, Weeds does hang out here from time to time, so perhaps you can take up your valid concerns with him and get a better WeedsGM4 made? *shrugs*
Seemed alright to me but you are the professional by comparison.

[Blox]

WeedsGM3 sounds muddy and bad. And even then the sounds aren't exactly good for all I can hear.
Either way, Silverspring seems to be just better than it. (Not to mention that I seem to recall that the seemingly suddenly missing author of it was somewhat focusing on Doom music sounding alright.)
The problem with that one is that the focuses are messed up a bit, as an example I can say that Back to Saturn X's first map sounds kind of weird with it.

Not because it sounds bad, it's just that instead of having the distorted guitar flowing around the background, it's instead the loudest instrument by far. (Messed up focus.)
And the piano instruments (or whatever sounds like it) are too quiet.

I'd also be interested in a chopped-down version of the Roland SoundCanvas. Because the only ones I can find sound exactly like FMod's.
..Which kind of sounds exactly like the aforementioned chopped-down Windows one.

Edit: Though I must say that E2M8 sounds like ass with it. (And some others sounding bad. But generally it's not too bad.)

[Gez]

Either way, Silverspring seems to be just better than it.

Too bad it was apparently cobbled up pretty badly on the technical side, so that it becomes an absolute disaster with FluidSynth.

[Blox]

Woop-de-doo-diddly-do-damn, isn't the stance of soundfonts just wonderful today.

[shoober]

I personally use this. Its the Roland SoundCanvas soundfont. Its the closest thing to hearing how the Doom music should sound besides having an actual Roland SoundCanvas.

Since you got FluidSynth working, are you using the Reverb and Chorus effects with it? I can't seem to get them to work. I've made sure that the commands are enabled and everything. Anyone know how to enable Reverb and Chorus with the FluidSynth?

[BlueFireZ88]

How would you compare the Roland SoundCanvas above to the SC55 version of the soundfont?

I'm using BASSMIDI, BTW.

[shoober]

The SC55 is the SoundCanvas. The SC in SC55 is short for SoundCanvas. There are various SoundCanvas models here. The Doom music was composed on a SC55 so it would be best to use the SC55 or SC-55mkII.

EDIT:

I just tried out BASSMIDI and its a little bit better then FluidSynth. Thanks for sharing that you use BASSMIDI. Its a really nice software synthesizer. Probably the best one there is. I'll be using it for now on.

EDIT2:

WOW! I just found this awesome new Roland SoundCanvas SC55 soundfont. This one is way better then the one I posted earlier in the thread. Check it out:



There's a download link in the description. Here's the link to download it. I just played the first 3 maps of Knee Deep in the Dead and it sounds amazing. I compared it to these mp3s I have of Doom music using an actual Roland SoundCanvas SC55 and it sounds very very close to the original. It even retains the REVERB AND CHORUS! YES! I highly recommend that everyone downloads it and gives it a try with BASSMIDI.

[Mánibranðr System]

Bump, but I have a couple of good suggestions for soundfonts.

Musica Theoria V2 has some pretty good sounds : [Download]
The Aspirin SoundFont is also good : [Download]
If you want a lightweight GM soundset, the Ultimate GM/GS Soundfont is about as good as it gets : [Download]
sYnergy is also good for an 8 MB Soundfont : [Download]
For a deluxe set, you will want to try SGM 2.01, AirFont GM 3.80, RealFont 2.1 and Arachno SoundFont.

However recently, someone went and made a ridiculously huge soundfont that is aroud 570 MB to download, and decompresses to 1.64 GB, it's sort of worth it since it has a really good set of Choir, orchestral and Guitar sounds. Get Evanessence2 SoundFont.

Happy listening!

[Graf Zahl]

However recently, someone went and made a ridiculously huge soundfont that is aroud 570 MB to download, and decompresses to 1.64 GB, it's sort of worth it since it has a really good set of Choir, orchestral and Guitar sounds. Get Evanessence2 SoundFont.

Happy listening!

So what can I do with this monster? It's unusable because it immediately crashes when being used from inside (G)ZDoom because it runs out of memory.
Is there any way to scale this down to usable proportions?

[SyntherAugustus]

Use it with the Coolsoft or BASSMIDI driver instead and load it through zdoom. Though if you're going to be using big ol soundfonts I would suggest CGM3 instead (despite the volume issues). Evanessence/Music Box doesn't play the drumkit too well.

[NeuralStunner]

I can vouch for the BASSMIDI driver. Far better than either TiMidity or FluidSynth.