Besides Creative's cards, what soundcards out there support SoundFont? and which of those do so under Linux as well?

There are software samplers, that support soundfonts, and a lot of free ones, so I'd suggest not to condition a choice of soundcard basing on soundfont support.

- Piotr

There are several issues with software based synths:

1) Latency, this is a big issue if you use external synths together with the sound card
2) hunting for a soundfont synth for both windows and Linux, I so don't want to do that.. besides wavetable mixing is something a soundcard should be doing, not the CPU.

That's ridiculous! CPU usage by a soundfont player (like "sfz") is absolutely negligible on modern PCs. You'd have to load hundreds and play them all simultaneously to have any impact. Since this is all in-the-box (software) latency is not an issue either. There's a reason why the overwhelming majority of professional media composers use software synths and samplers as their primary platform for sound generation.

easy there:

ok, I have several external synths (mostly quite old), and I do like their sounds... my concern was that the latency issue would become noticable when using a software synth together with a hardware MIDI synth, that is my concern. The music writing I do is NOT professional stuff, just for my own amusement.

At any rate, at this point I would be happy to find a "software wavetable driver" that supports sf2, i.e. it looks like a MIDI device, but is using CPU to do the job, for Linux, one can tweak FluidSynth to do the job (I think) but not the case (I think) for Windows... but I have not found a "software wavetable driver" for windows yet.... if any one knows one, I'd be much appreciative.

P.S. the last time I played with midi software synth's was with Yamaha's XG VST stuff, and it's latency was huge at the time (like 500ms), but on the other hand that was 7+ years ago and did more that I am looking for.

Latency is more a soundcard issue. If you were using integrated soundcard, then your latency could get even 500ms (especially 7 years ago), but most of recent audio interfaces over $150 will work in less than 8ms. That should be really enough.

- Piotr

That is one reason why I was looking for a soundcard that supports loadable wavetable and supports sf2, so I am now back to my original question: besides creative cards, anyone know a soundcard which does sf2 in hardware?

Soundfont format is Creative's invention and it's supported by Creative cards only. But it wouldn't solve latency problem. It would be the same as if you used software samplers.

Check out http://www.kvraudio.com/ for free samplers, that support sfz format.

Noone would advise you to go "hardware soundfont support" way, and there's really reason to that. With software samplers you'll be able to do much more in more comfortable way and with profesional audio interface (let it be just E-MU 0404 or something) you'll get lower latency (less than 8ms, even 4 or 2 ms) and higher quality sound.

If that does not convince you, than I don't know. Go, and buy Creative X-Fi - it has ASIO 2 drivers (latency about 20ms) and soundfont support, and multimedia mambo jumbo ;)

- Piotr

easy there:

Quote:
Soundfont format is Creative's invention and it's supported by Creative cards only. But it wouldn't solve latency problem. It would be the same as if you used software samplers.

I actually found hardware support for soundfont for something besides CreativeCards: NVidia's Soundstorm integrated audio which was a par of their higher end nForce 2 chipsets.

Quote:
Noone would advise you to go "hardware soundfont support" way, and there's really reason to that. With software samplers you'll be able to do much more in more comfortable way and with profesional audio interface (let it be just E-MU 0404 or something) you'll get lower latency (less than 8ms, even 4 or 2 ms) and higher quality sound.

I am perfectly happy with a a software solution if
1) low latency -- which is what you say the software solutions nowaday have
2) relatively trouble free to use the software synth with lots of other programs -- I was looking for a "software synth driver" which I could select as a MIDI device from any sequencer, i.e. it would "install" a MIDI device which just uses the CPU for the work of wavetable MIDI playing.

I took a look at http://www.kvraudio.com/, but I did not find an item of (2) that I was hunting for, do you know where on that page or elsewhere a

Latency is not a software problem, it's hardware and it depends on quality of your audio interface (soundcard). Low latency cards support ASIO 2 drivers.

You should be looking for vst or dx instruments (samplers actually) not midi emulation software. Sampling technology is light years beyond wavetable emulation, and it's easier to use, just load a sampler into vst (or dx) instruments slot, load a soundfont, create a midi track and select sampler as output (just as you selected midi device before). Settings are saved with the project, and no silly jugglery is needed.

I found 2 vst samplers/sample players with sfz support and 13 for sf2 support (which I believe is more current format) just on the site I directed you to, even more by google.

Try them. Don't worry about latency, new audio interface with ASIO 2 drivers would solve the problem.

- Piotr