Soundfont tutorial??

[RayMaynard]

Can anybody help me make a soundfont? I'm trying to make one with either samples from real instruments or samples from various video games. I need to know if there is any free soundfont maker software and any tools for ripping the sounds and samples from, say, N64, SNES, PS1, and Gamecube games?

[timaeus222]

It takes a long time to make a soundfont. What I have done before is use Viena (not Vienna) and compile a (very large) set of WAV files by importing them and mapping them to keys. It may take a person 8~24 hours total to make a basic soundfont of one-sample-per-note single-velocity-response WAV files (unless they use a cool Python program [like for the jRhodes], which I actually have no idea how to do), and it took me about a week to make one with one-sample-per-note triple-velocity-response WAV files. It's really tedious, just saying.

[MindWanderer]

Also, there's no real need to make a true "soundfont" (sf2). sfz's are easier, they're just wav's and a text file. You can use a program, like sfzed, to help, or you can write the text file from scratch in Notepad (which can end up being faster, since you can make your own templates and copy-paste).

For the SNES, Genesis, and earlier consoles, there are already soundfonts and VSTi's out there. Consoles after those didn't use such constrained sound-generating systems and don't have any practical limits as to what they could produce, so you'd need to rip sounds directly from the games somehow.

[RayMaynard]

Ah, ok! Do you need to learn some kind of basic programming language? And how would you do all that in Notepad? Can you send me some links for all that? That would really help me out!

[MindWanderer]

Here's the official SFZ specifications: http://www.cakewalk.com/DevXchange/sfz.asp

I'm not aware of any easy-to-read tutorials.