Recommended SoundFonts

On this page you can find a collection of SoundFonts recommended for use with mt32-pi.

Feel free to edit this page to help other users find good SoundFonts!

High-quality SoundFonts

These SoundFonts don't necessarily try to mimic any particular synthesizer, but instead provide a high-quality General MIDI compatible bank with their own unique style.

• 32MbGMStereo by NTONYX
• Arachno SoundFont by Arachnosoft
• Chorium openwrld
• Crisis General MIDI by Christophe Maricourt
• GeneralUser GS by S. Christian Collins - included with mt32-pi.
• SGM by Shan
• Timbres of Heaven by Don Allen

Roland SC-55/Sound Canvas

The SC-55 was the first in the Sound Canvas family of synthesizers from Roland Corporation, released in 1991. It is famous for being the first General MIDI compliant synthesizer to become available, and due to its widespread adoption, is often considered the "de facto" implementation of General MIDI. Many pieces of GM music were composed using the SC-55, and so listening to them on this synthesizer means that you are hearing them as the composer intended.

A nice overview of the Sound Canvas can be found at ctrl.alt.rees' website.

There are some SoundFonts that attempt to recreate the sound of the Sound Canvas with varying levels of accuracy/quality:

• SC-55 by EmperorGrieferus
• SC-55 by Patch93
• "Default Windows MIDI SoundFont" - Sound Canvas sounds converted from the Microsoft/Roland synthesizer included with Windows.

E-mu Systems/Creative Labs and Ensoniq

Being the creators of the SoundFont standard, E-mu Systems and Creative Labs offered some of their own SoundFonts which came bundled as part of the driver software for the Sound Blaster series of PC sound cards. If you ever owned a Sound Blaster AWE32, AWE64, Live!, or Audigy card, you may remember some of these SoundFonts.

A list of known General MIDI SoundFonts from Creative Labs can be found on this web page.

• 1MGM.SF2 is a SoundFont version of the AWE32's ROM samples and can be found included with Creative's SoundFont Librarian.
• CT2MGM.SF2, CT4MGM.SF2 and CT8MGM.SF2 can be found on the Sound Blaster Audigy driver CD in the Audio/Common/SFBank directory.
• EAPCI8M - SoundFont conversion of the Ensoniq AudioPCI sound bank.