Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] MIDI on alsa with SBLIve
From: Lee Revell (rlrevell_AT_joe-job.com)
Date: Wed Sep 22 2004 - 18:14:26 EEST
On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 02:36, Erik Steffl wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 21:34, Erik Steffl wrote:
> >
> >>>>I got it. It wasn't the .sf2 file being bad -- it was having an old
> >>>>version of sfxload hanging around in /usr/local/bin. The new version
> >>>>downloaded by apt-get sounds fine.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Also, there are much better free (as in beer) soundfonts available than
> >>>the ones that come with the SBLive. Google for "personal copy
> >>>soundfont".
> >>
> >> Q: why are soundfonts mostly in funny formats (exe? sfArk?), instead
> >>of compressed *SF2 files (using some common compression program like zip
> >>or gzip etc.). That's not only on personal copy site but pretty much all
> >>the site that have soundfonts.
> >
> > Because most people use them on Windows and you need a third party
> > program to uncompress zip and gzip on that platform.
>
> ???
>
> pretty much everything else (that I have seen on various windows
> centric download sites or usenet newsgroups or ftp sites etc.) is
> distributed in zip or rar formats, pretty much everybody uses winzip anyway.
>
Warez groups maybe. Most legitimate Windows software is distributed as
a self-extracting exe. Anything else looks fly-by-night. It's annoying
when you go to reinstall a Windows box and you haver to install WinZip
to get one fscking driver. Of course they finally added native support
with XP so it's no longer as much of an issue, but it still requires an
extra step. On Windows people expect to be able to download the file
and double click it to start the installer.
> sfArk is third party too, plus it seems like it's not even available
> anymore. and the personal copy guy even offers the program for download
> instead of offering the soundfonts in some 'normal' format.
>
> seems like a soundfont conspiracy to me.
No, the SoundFont loader that comes with the Windows driver can load
sfArk files directly. Also many soundfonts were not packaged to be
loaded on computers, you would load them into your hardware synth.
Lee
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