Soundfonts and soundcards

Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:30 am

Hi everybody, I'm new to this forum so sorry if this question has come up many times before. Either way I hope somebody can help me.

I have been looking at using soundfonts in a sequencer such as Sonar or Cubase or something similar. However I have a M-AUDIO Delta Audiophile 2496 soundcard and from reading up a little on soundfonts it seems that they are exclusive to certain soundcards eg. Creative and Audigy as these cards can actually store the sample data on them. I have come across a few mentions of using certain software to manage the fonts but don't really understand how to do this. Also does this compromise the performance e.g latency etc noticeably in comparison with a soundfont compatible card?

I would like to carry on using the audiophile if possible as it is quite good for overlaying single audio tracks at a time which is what i usually use it for. Also I have an onboard soundcard (c-media somthing or other!) which I sometimes use because it supports 5.1 surround for dvds/films but I cannot use it at the same time as the Delta card so have to unplug that first. I would consider purchasing another card if it could handle recording and playback at a decent latency, manage the soundfonts and provide outputs for 5.1 if it wasnt too expensive! (I know-not asking for much am i?!

Another thought was if I could combine the use of the audiophile with another soundcard but I don't have any spare PCI slots! Would this even be possible anyway?

Sorry for going on, I hope someone finds this topic interesting enough to reply as I don't really know what I'm doing. I did a music technology course 6 years ago but we never did anything practical like this, we just seemed to waste alot of time playing on really rubbish 4 track recorders or using basic general midi with the built in sounds to make rubbish compositions...oh and getting stoned quite a bit too!

Thanks
Andy

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 2:53 pm

Soundfont is a Creative creation and hardware support is still embedded in many Creative soundcards. No need for that today. Soundfonts can played in some DAW software that usually also supports ASIO and/or WDM which most soundcards and audio interface makers provide drivers for.

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 2:57 pm

http://homepage.mac.com/bismark/bs-16/index.html

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