This article discusses how to use soundfonts through VST if you:

A) Need free live instruments to add to your music, or just want to get started with a General MIDI sample bank.

B) Your application has VST capability but does not load soundfonts or others.

Soundfonts?

A soundfont is basically a sampler bank filled with recordings of live or digital instruments, often using multiple samples for different notes or even octaves of the instrument. This allows you to play a note and the corresponding sample with the right recorded tone will be triggered.

Soundfonts are also more than that "basic" explanation, and can also for example have things like multiple layers for velocity, envelopes and effects.

Do I need them?

Soundfonts can be useful in the right scenario. Although there are many free VST's and synthesizers available that can generate good quality synthetic sounds for your electronic song, you might find yourself on occasion needing a live instrument like a sitar, oboe or certain drum sounds that can't easily be generated. Nowadays many commercial applications have solutions for live instruments, but many free ones don't.

Some startup artists also don't own sound-modules or have access to a studio with one. If you have an application that loads soundfonts, or for the scope of this article, a VST host or VST-capable application then soundfonts may be useful. Soundfonts can be used in other ways besides VST but for this article I will stick to VST.

Where are they?

There are a large range of fonts available. Some of them require you to pay for them, but there are many free ones available that are good enough for use. Hammersound and Synthzone have a comprehensive list if you looking for a place to start but a simple search on google.com can also lead you to many free ones. I would recommend getting GUGS as a base soundfont, read below.

GUGS

There is a free complete General Midi / General GS soundfont called GUGS (General User GS) which I feel worth mentioning. It is available over here:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~coll0360/index.htm

Personally I have heard worse studio sound-modules than the GUGS soundfont, and I have also heard better - but they do of course come with a large price tag ;) eg. Yamaha.

The quality of the instruments are not bad, some are better than others and the author has taken some time and patience to try to tune and balance the tone across the range of instruments.

It is also a full General MIDI sound bank, which means it has 128 standard instruments and also has extra banks including many less common types of instruments and many effect sounds. GUGS also has 10 drumkits ranging from electronic to orchestral.

Using soundfonts with VST

I'll list two free packages I know of:

SFZ (http://www.rgcaudio.com/sfz.htm) and

Synthfont (http://www.synthfont.com)

I would personally recommend trying SFZ first as it has notably better quality and features. It is also more compatible with the Soundfont specifications. I have only listed synthfont to try if SFZ doesn't work for you.

SFZ is available as both a standalone mini-ASIO host or a VST.

You can load different soundfonts into channel slots and select an instrument out of each soundfont. All you have to do is set the appropriate channel in your application to play the note to and the correct soundfont + instrument combination will be played.

Tips

* If SFZ refuses at first to load your soundfont, use different settings by the loading method on the left of it's interface.

* It is not generally recomended to use soundfonts for things that can be generated by synthesizer VST's such as synthstrings and synthbasses. Synthesizer VST's generate sound at the same resolution at any note which give far richer quality and have much more control. Soundfonts are generally more useful for live instruments and sound effects.

The end

So if you think soundfonts may be useful to you go ahead and give them a whirl, they can be an effective free way to get some extra sounds ;)

This article is distributed in the hope that it may be useful. It may not be free from errors or omitions but it may be updated or extended. Comments and suggestions welcome ;)