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upsetting all the people who like my general midi content by informing them i am not particularly fond of soundfonts

someday i will rant about this. today is not that day. suffice to say that while CREATIVE® SoundFont® technology is okay at General MIDI and offers some fun creative possibilities, it was never good at GM extensions like Roland's GS and Yamaha's XG, and i love those, so i hate it

that's not an ironic use of the trademark symbol btw. SoundFont® is a registered trademark of Creative Technology. and if you're thinking “hey aren't they the company notable for making sound cards in the 1990's” that's because, yes, this is ancient and obsolete technology

unfortunately (and this is where i go a little nuclear) CREATIVE® SoundFont® was never particularly good. why are we still using this. why has the name become quasi-genericised. surely there are better ways to do libraries of sampled instruments.

god i guess one way to explain it is that it's like if you were really into the moog or something and then people are like “oh yeah i love that! i have a moog synthesiser sample library that all my gamer friends tell me sounds the most realistic”. it's not the same instrument

i can respect a sample library as a legitimate kind of “instrument” in its own right but…

people will pour great amounts of effort into making the “best” SC-55-soundalike CREATIVE® SoundFont® file and it'll take up like a hundred times more disk space than the original ROMs did and not even support adjusting the fucking filter cutoff, so it can't play electronic music

i think the gimmick of “here's a General MIDI sound set that resembles the instrument samples from Super Mario 64's soundtrack” is kinda neat though i suppose. that's a weird way to use CREATIVE® SoundFont® technology but it's a fun one at least

i am a single issue voter in this election and my single issue is that nobody understands general midi. not satisfied with the candidates' answers on this matter

“vice president harris what do you think of the fact that nobody knows what a variation effect is these days. how do you feel about amp simulation”

oops i guess this did turn into a rant. if you want suggestions for what to use instead, well:

• hardware: Roland Sound Canvas, Yamaha MU, or similar
• software: Roland Sound Canvas VA (VST), Yamaha S-YXG50, Nuked SC-55

all more powerful than any soundfont can ever be

specifically i recommend these if you want accurate playback of 1990's General MIDI/Roland GS/Yamaha XG music or if you want to try to write music for this exciting world that once was. if you just want a way to put 128 instrument samples in a file, SoundFont® is… fine i guess

but it's frustrating because oh my god the most widely known and used implementations of General MIDI are really… lowest common denominator. it's like the poster child for a standard that's a victim of its own success

oh also there's just the thing that Roland and Yamaha knew what they were doing and their sound sets were balanced and versatile. your average SoundFont® file is not

@hikari as someone with experience messing with incredibly fucky implementations and extensions of midi & soundfonts, i feel seen.