Best freeware sampler? Soundfonts?

[Youn]

I'm really looking into creating sampled instruments, like pianos, so is there anything out there for free that can do this?

I have some experience with Kontakt and Gigastudio but really just need the basics, ASDR and maybe even round-robin and release triggers. I do need high polyphony too... maybe filters would be nice...

I kinda got clued in on the use of soundfonts a while back on this forum. can anyone give more info on the capabilities? I tried vienna studio but it wouldn't open (no compatible hardware) but there's vsti soundfont players out there, right? so what gives? I tried finding more info on the web but had poor results!

any help would be appreciated, I don't really want to resort to spending money on kontakt or gigastudio, but realize I may have to...

[alex zonder]

Youn I'd take a look at Highlife:
http://www.discodsp.com/highlife/
Highlife is able to create sampled instruments and save them as sfz.

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/977.html
It's a bit more than basic... You can load VSTi's in Highlife as well.



The best free sfz/sf2 player out there is rgc's SFZ
http://www.rgcaudio.com/sfz.htm
nicfit made a little plug to access its hidden parameters:
http://www.asseca.com/nicfit/sfz_buddy.html

Here are some test results that show how good both Highlife and SFZ actually are (and how most - even expensive - samplers suck....):
http://www.discodsp.com/highlife/aliasing/

[fluffy]

Try sfz, very simple - doesn't allow editing, only loads sf2 or the sfz format:

http://www.rgcaudio.com/sfz.htm

Also, SynthFont is good, and can also load gigasamples, at least to some degree:

http://www.synthfont.com/

There is also a soundfont editor on the SynthFont page, called Viena (note the different spelling ). It seems to work fine here.

Creative's Vienna will only load if you have a Soundblaster card present, that's probably why it won't work for you.

I'm not extremely knowlegable about sampling, etc, but have put together a few soundfont's, it seems like a pretty capable format. The only odd thing is that it doesn't use stereo samples, they have to be broken down into separate left and right samples. Otherwise, it's a pretty solid format - filtering, etc. are available.

[Youn]

wow, thanks guys, I'm checking this stuff out now... the highlife one will be useful for smaller less complex stuff (which I certainly need sometimes!) but this soundfont stuff is awesome. I came across that page before, thinking "viena" was "vienna" so I skimmed over it...

[user1]

Read

http://www.discodsp.com/highlife/aliasing/

and

http://www.maz-sound.de/index.php?show=mpcs&mpc_id=34

to see where SFZ falls.