Saving soundfonts in the Ardour project folder

#1

I have been converting my Ensoniq EPS instruments into sf2 files (originally from floppy disks that I ripped many years ago into gigs). I have created a soundfont called EPS_Instruments01.sf2 and I am using this while dumping very old Sequences/Songs from my EPS. This allows me to keep everything original until I want to change it.

I want to share these dumps with friends who helped out with some of these sequences and want to make it as portable as possible for those who have Ardour already.

Does putting custom soundfonts (sf2) into a soundfonts folder within the Ardour project folder and using those within the “Ace Fluidsynth” plugin folder guarantee they will be loaded when loading the .ardour file on a different system? I guess it all depends on how either Ardour or the plugin stores the paths as these would all be in my HOME folder (Linux or Windows too, I would imagine).

If this is not supported, it could be a good feature to add, not only for soundfonts, but also for gigs for LinuxSampler. The Ardour project folder would be absolute first to check for these files, then follow other paths secondary.

#2

If you load a soundfont (from anywhere on your disk) into Ace-Fluidsynth, Ardour creates a link to that file in the “externals” folder of the session. If you replace this link with a copy of the original sf2-file, the soundfont is stored with the Ardour-session.
So if you distribute your Ardour-project, the soundfont is included and should be loaded into FluidSynth when starting the session.

#3

Ah nice! This is very good to know. Thank you!