My favorite links to download free soundfont.

Hi there !

this page is dedicated to free soundfont ressources. I collected years after years some great sf2. You may want to give a try. I can not assure you will find everything you need but I've tried to cover each standard instruments from piano to orchester instruments. Please don't hesitate to tell me what you think and send me your links if you want to be in that list.

Technical point :

As you should know soundfont is an old file format that is not perfect at all... I mean that most of the SF2 soundbank are based on the same creation method.
1st : sampling.
2nd : midi mapping and/or pitching.
So, if a bank is very light weight (under 1 Mo) it will probably (quite surely) use only one (at best a few) sampled note(s), pitched and reaffected all over the keyboard map. 
There are not so many methods in order to obtain a good realistic soundbank from sampling (I didn't say synthesis right ?), you must sample as many notes as you want in as many articulations and positions as you need and map all the records on the keyboard at different velocities. That's why professionnal soundbanks take gigabytes on your hard drives, it can't hardly be less, with only a very few sounds, so size is not a rule but still...

Until today the music industry evolved a lot. At the very beginning the SoundFont technology was revolutionnary & powerful but nowadays some other softwares and file formats have taken the power and are much easier to use. Neverthless, despite all the sounding defaults and unpractability...you can find a lot of free soundfont all over the web. 

That said here is my free soundfont list :

Collections :

Collections of different instruments and/or drumsets. Some of the collections are set according to General Midi standard for instruments, which make them a lot easier to use and compatible with existing midi songs and sequencers.

DSK Music has released the Hispasonic Sampled Series, a collection of free high quality multi-sample instruments in collaboration with Hispasonic.com
This collection includes : 6 classic keyboards (Clavinet, Dyno Rhodes, DX7 Rhodes, Hohner Pianet, Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer) + 3 saxophones (tenor, soprano and alto) + 3 guitars (acoustic, nylon and steel) + Steinway piano in three variations: standard, bright and damped.

SoniVox MI
Fender bass, Bansouri flute, synth, tabla drums and many more.

Digital Sound Factory
A general collection of 116 instruments.

Fluid Collection - Release 3
Big general soundfont collection for musicians.

Crisis General Midi 3.0
The biggest Soundfont Collection 1,57 GB !

Titanic Soundfont
Another nice collection - Download on French site.

Piano :

EVP73 - Rhodes

Roland Piano

Rhodes MKI

Steinway Grand Piano

Hohner D6 Clavinet

Chromatic Percussion :

Church Bells

Xylophone

Guitar :

Jazz Guitar

Nice Stagg Guitar

Acoustic Guitars

Ensemble :

Papelmedia Demo Orchestrer Soundfont

Synth Lead :

Access Virus TI

Access Virus TI HS1

Access Virus TI HS3

Drumkits and percussive kits :

Real Soundfont Drumkit

You may need to use sfArkXT OSX in order to decompress some SF2 and use them with your sampler or soundfont player if like me you are a mac user.

For further research, you might also consider these other sites, containing a huge amount of links to free soundfont depending on what you need.

HomeMusician
Hammersound
SF2MIDI
SoundFonts.it

At that time I can't find all the links to the sounds I collected, so right now it might be completed in the future, but it's a beginning. And it should be enough to be familiar with soundfont & to know if you want to work with or not. 

Enjoy !

Peace.

Sam.

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