Hey, that's actually a good soundfont. Not quite as good as the old classic scc-1 but comes pretty close. Which is high praise for a free soundfont. Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome. I don't know much about this topic because I had no use for soundfonts yet. Thanks for confirming that is a good one.

Hmmm... Maybe it depends on the games one tries, but I downloaded that soundfont and tried it with a couple of games (Tie Fighter intro music, Privateer intro music and flight music, and Dune 2), and frankly it sounded quite a bit poorer to me than e.g. Chorium Rev A (or Timbres of Heaven).

I even started suspecting does this soundfont lack e.g. the extra GS drumsets and such which some General MIDI games support, as sometimes the drums seemed to lack some ooomph.

Anyway as said it may also depend on the games one tries, so one needs to try them themselves. My favorites still are Chorium Rev A and Timbres of Heaven (99% of the time using Chorium, but I admit ToH has potential to sound better depending on the game/MIDI file).

It always depends on the game. I tried the above soundfont with Duke3D and ROTT.

To be honest I don't like Timbres or Chorium much. It's not that the instruments are bad by themselves but they are very badly balanced. There is always one or more instruments which sounds to low or too loud compared to the others.

That's why my favorite is still the scc-1. It's hard to beat the soundfont most games were developed for after all.

Yeah I keep testing certain games which I know to use the extended Sound Canvas features (in SCC-1/SC-55), like many Origin games (Privateer, Ultima 8, Wing Commander 3), Dune 2, Descent etc., because I also want to hear whether the said soundfont seems to support those features, like the extra drumsets. This soundfont sounded strikingly less impressive (than e.g. Chorium) especially in Privateer, which I personally consider as possibly the best sounding General MIDI game I've heard. That flight music, oh my god...

As far as I know, Duke3D and ROTT (as well as Doom 1-2) use vanilla General MIDI, so there Sound Canvas compliant soundcards/soundfonts don't really get any edge over vanilla General MIDI cards, but sound more or less the same. Admittedly, most General MIDI games probably supported just the vanilla General MIDI, but some composers went the extra mile with GS extensions.

That's interesting, because I had (still have) a real SCC-1 sound card too, so I had been specifically trying to find a soundfont that would have a similar balance and otherwise resemble SCC-1 (I was mainly trying to find a real genuine SCC-1/SC-55 soundfont, or e.g. Yamaha XG which I knew sounds quite much like SCC-1, but even better).

Chorium ended my search, its balance seems very similar to SCC-1 (even in those games which specifically support Sound Canvas extended features), and to me it overall feels like a superior version of SCC-1 sound font, similar feeling I've gotten e.g. with Yamaha XG sound cards.

BTW do you have some actual (genuine) SCC-1 soundfont? I earlier tried to find one but I think they were merely fan made "remakes" that tried to sound like SCC-1/SC-55, but had differences here and there. And as said, then I felt Chorium pretty much sounded to me like an improved SCC-1 soundfont.

As for Timbres of Heaven, I kinda agree that its balance is somewhat different from a SCC-1, like I keep mentioning the intro music of X-Wing (or was it Tie Fighter?) where its loud horns eclipse rest of the instruments. That is why I don't recommend it at least as the only GM/GS soundfont, and frankly I think it went a bit overboard with its huge size (304MB). But, it also needs to be said that it has possibly the best quality instruments, partly due to its huge size, so it has the potential to sound the best.

But as many times said, one just needs to try out different soundfonts to find the one the most with your liking. Arguing about which is the best soundfont is almost like arguing which color is the best (yellow, because I decided so back when I was a kid).

I had the same question. :) Not sure if he was talking about a real SCC-1 sound card, or a soundfont.

I've found two soundfonts that claim to be Sound Canvas soundfonts:

GS sound set (16 bit).sf2 (size: 3.31MB)
Roland SC-55 v1.1.sf2 (size: 9.42MB)

but IIRC they didn't quite sound the same as my real SCC-1, so they felt more like fan made imitations of Sound Canvas. Or then there have been quite different sounding SC-55 sound fonts than what my SCC-1 sounds...

I'm using Arachno, Chorium rev A, SGM and WeedsGM3. All are fine in their ways.
It all depends what game you're playing. Some are more appropriate than others depending on the game.

Any suggestions for Tyrian 2000?

I don't know how the music in this game is.
Best is to try it yourself and see how it sounds.

Also you're using Bassmidi. I'm using Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth. It's a bit better.

I've switched over to VirtualMIDISynth. Is there any consensus on what Soundfont its best for general gaming use? At least as a starting out point?

No, there is no consensus. :)

But my personal suggestion is still to use Chorium Rev A, IMHO it is a good all-around General MIDI/GS soundfont and not too big either (like that awfully big Timbres of Heaven).

Same for me : Chorium is good overall, good quality / weight ratio.

Timbres of Heaven is now up to Version 3.94 and weighs in at 416 MB now: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lJvl9jO8e7YRmq2dZ59Dz_SdsQKQBgfC
This is a self-Extracting "EXE" 7-Zip archive.

Cheers!

In this day and age of malware here and there, people should be careful in downloading and executing .exe files (among other things).

Anyway, I downloaded that file and instead of executing it, uncompressed it with the 7-zip tool (right click on the file and select 7-zip => Extract...). Seems ok to me, includes a .sf2 soundfont file etc.

Did you ever try Arachno soundfont guys?

That's my recommendation :)