GeneralUser

This is a friendly fork of the FluidSynth version of the GeneralUser GS soundfont originally developed by S. Christian Collins.

It only contains minor changes to the names of the files, and the formatting of text files. Otherwise, it is identical to the original.

About

GeneralUser GS is a GM and GS compatible SoundFont bank for composing, playing MIDI files, and retro gaming. It features 259 instrument presets and 11 drum kits, all while possessing a very low memory footprint (less than 30 MB of RAM). Due to its clever, detailed sound programming, GeneralUser GS can sound as good or better than SoundFonts that are 2-3 times its size.

I decided on the name "GeneralUser" because the bank was designed to sound well with all kinds of music rather than specializing in only a few styles, thereby benefiting the general user. It's not a great name, but that's what I came up with almost 20 years ago, and I haven't bothered to change it.

Compatibility

Although GeneralUser GS was originally designed for use with Sound Blaster audio cards, the most recent development has been focused on SoundFont-compatible software instead. The current version of GeneralUser GS requires a SoundFont synth with support for SoundFont 2.01 modulators. Compatible synths include FluidSynth 1.0.9 or later (and other software that uses FluidSynth such as Qsynth, LMMS, and ScummVM, just to name a few), MuseScore 2.0.3 or later, SynthFont2 2.0.3.0 or later, and VSTSynthFont 1.080 or later.

While the current version of GeneralUser GS can be used with the hardware synthesizer found in many Sound Blaster audio cards, you will achieve better results using a version that was designed especially for this hardware (available at http://www.schristiancollins.com/generaluser.php).

Most other SoundFont synths do not support all of the programming I have used in GeneralUser GS and will cause many of the presets to sound incorrect. For these unsupported SoundFont synths, you can download an older "SoftSynth" version of GeneralUser GS from my website that cuts out a lot of the special programming and is less likely to result in broken-sounding presets.

Installation

Please follow your synth/sound card's documentation for instructions on loading GeneralUser GS as the default GM/GS bank. This usually requires GeneralUser GS to be loaded into bank 0, and any other SoundFonts loaded into bank 0 to be removed prior.

Miscellaneous

Instrument list files are currently provided for Cakewalk SONAR (Windows) and Rosegarden (Linux) sequencers in the "instrument lists" folder. If you create an instrument list for any other sequencers, please e-mail them to me at [email protected] and I will include them in the next release package.

I have also provided some free MIDI files in the "demo MIDIs" folder for your listening enjoyment. Please feel free to send me more of those as well :)

You can find updates to GeneralUser GS and more of my virtual instruments at http://www.schristiancollins.com. I can be reached at [email protected], but please don't send me questions that are easily answered by your sound hardware/software's documentation. I won't have time to answer every question that I receive.

Thank you! -~Chris Collins