SoundFont Synth review

So you want to use QuickTime musical instruments in your GarageBand song, or perhaps a few SoundFonts you've downloaded (see What are SoundFonts below), and you've struggled a bit with Apple's DLSMusicDevice (see separate article) and realised its limitations. So what can you do?

Fortunately, a very usable solution exists in the shape of SoundFont Synth, a $15 shareware program avaiable from Andy's OSX Music Page.

Using SoundFont Synth

You use SoundFont Synth in the same way as any other generator in GarageBand: create a new track and choose SoundFont Synth from the Generator popup. As GarageBand disables the edit (pencil) button till you've clicked Create, you'll have to immediately open the Track Info window before you can start using SoundFont Synth.

Once you do, you'll see the Synth's no-frills settings window:

Click Choose to locate and select a SoundFont on your system, or stick with the default QuickTime musical instruments. (There's no way to go back to QuickTime musical instruments once you've selected a SoundFont, bar creating a new track to return SoundFont Synth to its default.)

To select the specific instrument or bank of sounds, you use the Instrument popup. If you use QuickTime musical instruments, you'll see an enormous list of instruments, which are those used by QuickTime to play MIDI files.

SoundFont Synth does have a few other options. Pre-load instruments is, I presume, a performance-related option. Use Reverb does what it says. The Use Pitch Bend Wheel option is a goody, particularly if you have a MIDI keyboard. Using this option, you can use the pitch bend wheel on your MIDI keyboard to activate one of several filters, which alter the sound. Play with it and see what you can come up with.

SoundFont Synth is pretty basic as far as its options are concerned, but it's real power lies in the fact that it opens up a web-wide world of SoundFonts for you to use with GarageBand, and of course makes QuickTime instruments available in a way that Apple's standard DLSMusic Device definitely does not — ideal if, like me, you first got into computer music with something like MidiGraphy, which never made it past OS 8!

What are SoundFonts?

SoundFont is a file format for packaging together a series of digital music samples. It was originally developed by Creative Labs (who make the PC SoundBlaster card). SoundFont files have a .sf2 file extension, and often come compressed in a specific sfArk format, which can be uncompressed using the freeware OS X app, sfArkXTc. Once uncompressed, they should be copied to your ~/Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks/ folder, (though SoundFont Synth can be used to open a SoundFont anywhere on your system).