soundfont plugins

Installation & Configuration Windows
#1

Hello,

Tomorrow I’ll be giving a class to some students that have Ardour installed on both Windows and MacOS laptops. I’d like to show them how to use soundfonts and would like to know if anyone on this forum can suggest:

a) an Ardour compatible plugin that uses soundfonts and where to download it
b) a virtual synth that can be used with the plugin and where to download it.

If any can also answer the same thing for mac, please say, but I may ask the same question later on the Mac forum.

Unfortunately I don’t have a Mac or a PC to experiment on before the class - but your suggestions will help.

All the best,

#2

It may be a bit to late but fluidsynth is nice I have only test it myself on linux but its cross platform.
It felt stable and resource friendly.

http://www.fluidsynth.org/

#3

The downside seems to be that you have to build it yourself.

#4

Yep, Ardour 5.1 or later includes “a-fluidsynth” which can load .sf2 files on all platforms.

Currently it loads the first 16 programs of a .sf2 file onto the first 16 channels by default and the only way to change the mapping is to send MIDI Patch-Changes to the synth
Thats easy from a midi-keyboard, and not so easy from Ardour itself: You need a midi region. then Region > MIDI > Insert Patch Change, and play through it. Improving the workflow there is on the ToDo list.

#5

Ardour 5 includes Fluidsynth as the “a-fluidsynth” plugin.