Does anyone here still use Soundfonts?

Uncle Krunkus

I'm rediscovering my music setup, as it was about 7 years ago when I stopped composing and started getting used to being a parent.
It's a way more powerful PC now, but still running XP, with an Creative X-Fi soundcard. Cakewalk Pro Audio 8 (which I know is a dinosaur, but I need to get access to my old ideas, which are in that realm. I'll be installing Sonar and Cubase soon, as I'd like to learn all three)
I still really love my collection of Soundfonts, which always ran fine through the Creative cards, but would need a separate player to run under any non-Creative sound option. (I've tried this, and 8 channels of soundfonts running through a third party player will still reduce modern PCs to a chug.)
Is there anyone out there doing the same kind of thing?
How relevant are Soundfonts these days? Do I invest some more time in this old setup, or shift to the new (VST) type environment? Why?
I have next to no budget. And I know the old setup very well now.

DES · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 7:41 am Post subject:

IIRC Prosonus Studio One uses sound fonts with some of it's synths....I can check into to that to confirm.

From what I gather SF's are doing well though not as much in the limelight as they used to be... I think it was either RGC Audio (defunct now) or Cakewalk (who bought RGC) had a SF player. If you search thru www.kvraudio.com I'm sure you can find some others as well. SR's were something I never really got into for some reason - same goes for sampling too.....

Uncle Krunkus · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 2:45 pm Post subject:

Wow,
Thanks heaps DES for the link to KVR!
I'm even more inspired to install Cubase and start playing with VSTs now. And they've got a load of Soundfont players as well. Both VST and stand alone, free and donationware!
Really nice site.

patternsintheivy · Joined: Nov 27, 2011 Posts: 26 Location: Liverpool, UK

I use SoundFonts. You're only going to hurt yourself by not learning to use the newer software, but the old stuff is always relevant as long as it still makes great sounds.

It's not like they're so out of date that they're incompatible- there are some great VSTs that run SF2s, including Kontakt.