Recommended SoundFonts - dwhinham/mt32-pi GitHub Wiki
On this page you can find a collection of SoundFonts recommended for use with mt32-pi.
Feel free to edit this page to help other users find good SoundFonts!
⚠️ Note: It may not be possible to load large SoundFonts if your Raspberry Pi model does not have enough RAM. Some memory is also reserved for the system to function. The largest SoundFonts (e.g. in excess of 1GB) will require a Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB of RAM or above.
High-quality SoundFonts
These SoundFonts don't necessarily try to mimic any particular synthesizer, but instead provide a high-quality General MIDI compatible bank with their own unique style.
- 8mbgm_enhanced18.sf2 - more info and recommended games here.
- 32MbGMStereo by NTONYX
- Arachno SoundFont by Arachnosoft
- Chorium by openwrld
- Crisis General MIDI by Christophe Maricourt
- GeneralUser GS by S. Christian Collins - included with mt32-pi.
- SGM by Shan
- Timbres of Heaven by Don Allen
Roland SC-55/Sound Canvas
The SC-55 was the first in the Sound Canvas family of synthesizers from Roland Corporation, released in 1991. It is famous for being the first General MIDI compliant synthesizer to become available, and due to its widespread adoption, is often considered the "de facto" implementation of General MIDI. Many pieces of GM music were composed using the SC-55, and so listening to them on this synthesizer means that you are hearing them as the composer intended.
A nice overview of the Sound Canvas can be found at ctrl.alt.rees' website.
There are some SoundFonts that attempt to recreate the sound of the Sound Canvas with varying levels of accuracy/quality:
- SC-55 by trevor0402 - (using the SC55 to Soundfont Converter Written by Kitrinx and NewRisingSun)
- SC-55 by EmperorGrieferus
- SC-55 by Patch93
- "Default Windows MIDI SoundFont" - Sound Canvas sounds converted from the Microsoft/Roland synthesizer included with Windows.
E-mu Systems/Creative Labs and Ensoniq
Being the creators of the SoundFont standard, E-mu Systems and Creative Labs offered some of their own SoundFonts which came bundled as part of the driver software for the Sound Blaster series of PC sound cards. If you ever owned a Sound Blaster AWE32, AWE64, Live!, or Audigy card, you may remember some of these SoundFonts.
A list of known General MIDI SoundFonts from Creative Labs can be found on this web page.
1MGM.SF2is a SoundFont version of the AWE32's ROM samples and can be found included with Creative's SoundFont Librarian.CT2MGM.SF2,CT4MGM.SF2andCT8MGM.SF2can be found on the Sound Blaster Audigy driver CD in theAudio/Common/SFBankdirectory.- EAPCI8M - SoundFont conversion of the Ensoniq AudioPCI sound bank. NOTE: It is worth pointing out that due to differences in implementation to SF2, ECW cannot be completely converted
Gravis Ultrasound (GUS)/Voice Crystal
The Gravis Ultrasound was an extremely popular PC demo scene and gaming sound card in the 1990s. It employed a wavetable synthesis engine using a commercial sound font produced by Eye & I (nee Voice Crystal), a slightly better tuned version of which is available for purchase directly from Voice Crystal here.
Yamaha XG
Yamaha's own extension to the General MIDI standard, XG, was made available in the form of the Yamaha MU80 in 1994. XG has featured in many synthesizer modules, keyboards and sound cards since then.
None of the following SoundFonts seem perfect, but may get you close enough.