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Using Sonar with SBLive!, Audigy, and E-mu Soundcards:

If you use a Creative or E-mu soundcard on your system, it can most likely load and run Soundfonts natively using the soundcard hardware, and only using part of your system's RAM to hold the Soundfonts. This removes the load of playing the Soundfont samples from your CPU and allows you to play more Soundfonts with your host application.

All sequencers have their own way of accessing Soundfonts. In most cases, you will have to set up the Soundfont library using the Soundfont Manager Application that comes with the Creative soundcard, but with the Cakewalk Sonar sequencer, you can access and play these Soundfonts using a special interface built directly into Sonar itself.

So how is this done?

The Soundfont Bank Manager:

The only thing you have to use the Creative Soundfont Bank Manager (usually found in your program files: Start/All Programs/Creative/Sound Blaster Live!/Soundfont Bank Manager.) for, is setting up the Soundfont memory requirements. The Manager window is shown below... click on the button labelled "SoundFont Cache."

Setting the Soundfont's RAM Memory Requirements:

When you click on the button labelled "Soundfont cache" it will display a slider which allows you to set the amount of RAM that the Creative sound card hardware reserves from your computer to hold the Soundfonts. Estimate the total size of all the Soundfonts you plan to use and set this accordingly. Use "Static Caching" if your computer has 1 GB of RAM or more, otherwise use "Dynamic Caching" - which will only load in the Soundfonts if they are actually being used. 

The Sonar Soundfont Interface:

Once you have set the system RAM requirement, close the application window, then open up the Soundfont bank control panel in Sonar -  found on the top menu: "Options/Soundfonts..." (Note that this menu item appears greyed out if you do not have a Soundfont compatible sound card on your system, or if it is not installed correctly.)

You will see a list of all the Soundfont banks currently loaded into the Creative hardware.

(Note that these are banks, not patches... the individual patches of each bank will be selected from within the individual MIDI tracks of your project.)

Loading the Soundfonts:

The Soundfont bank window is where you load in the Soundfont libraries that you want to use in your project. (Typically, these are located on a folder on your computer's hard drive.)

Bank 0 is reserved for General MIDI, so you can begin by loading in your first bank into Bank 1. By default, Sonar looks in the project folder for any Soundfont files (files ending in .sf2), and if found, will automatically load them into empty banks. You can also tell Sonar to look in a different folder using the "Locations..." button. Finally, you can manually attach Soundfonts by using the "Attach..." button to browse to a Soundfont and load it into the currently highlighted bank.

Setting up the MIDI tracks:

Once loaded into a bank, the Soundfont then becomes accessible in Sonar. It can be assigned to a MIDI track and will then respond to any MIDI data sent from that track. To set up the MIDI track:

• Create a new MIDI track if one doesn't yet exist.
• In the track pane of the MIDI track, assign the "Out" to "Creative Soundfont Synth."
• Select a channel (each Soundfont will need its own channel).
• Select the "Bnk" (Bank) arrow to open a menu displaying all of your currently loaded Soundfonts.
• Select the bank containing the Soundfont you wish to use on this MIDI track.
• Select the "Pch" (Patch) arrow to open a menu displaying all of the patches available in the Soundfont.

Putting it all together:

To load other Soundfonts, just repeat the same process: load them into any of the open banks in Sonar’s Bank Manager window, then create a new MIDI track and set its parameters to access the particular patch you want to hear on this track. Using this method, you can attach as many different Soundfonts as you want (until you reach the limit of your RAM).

Note: The Soundfont's audio will be output from the audio outputs of the Sound Blaster card. If this is the only card on your system, then you are OK. But if you have another sound card that you are using to output audio from your software, you will need to do one of two things to have your Soundfonts play back along with the rest of your project's audio:

• Use an external mixer to mix the output of the Creative sound card and the main sound card together.
• Wire the output of the Creative sound card directly into a stereo input of your main sound card. 

With a MIDI keyboard hooked up, you can “play” any instrument by simply selecting the associated track. MIDI information is echoed through the channel and sent to the assigned Soundfont patch. In the same way, pressing record will allow you to record and then play back that instrument.

From this point, it is a fairly simple process to quickly set up an entire orchestra of instruments, then play and record them one at a time until you have built up your song.

Conclusion/Summary:

Setting up and using Sonar with a Creative Soundfont enabled sound card is a fairly simple process:

• Use the Creative Soundfont Manager to set the amount of Soundfont memory that you will use.
• Load the Sonar Soundfont Bank Manager with the Soundfont Libraries you want to use.
• Select the particular Soundfont patch in the specific MIDI track that you want this track to control.
• This track can now record your playing from an external MIDI keyboard, or play notes entered directly to the track or score from within Sonar itself.

Other sequencers work similar to this, the only difference being that the Soundfonts will need to be loaded and set up within the Creative Soundfont Manager. They can then be accessed in the same way from a MIDI track within the sequencer.

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We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful.

If you have further questions and/or comments, please contact us.

Regards,

Jayzen Sound

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General overview of Virtual Instruments

Links to other websites with information on Soundfonts