Find every LP Covers at Amazon.com the easy way. [via IGivaAShit]

The image to the right is a man saying “That’s scary.” In the middle is a big black bump where the t’s and sc all run together to make a big loud white noise in around the 3-6 KHz range.

If you EQ that range down you will be filtering out all sounds in that frequency, like hi-hats, finger snaps, the shimmer on the Rhodes, not to mention ruining that trippy reverb on the sample. What you really want is to dampen the range down but only when it gets above a certain volume — which is the definition of compression.

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You email us, we hear you.

Here is the rgc:audio VST SoundFont player. And it’s free. And it’s good.
(screen shot in ACID)

Of course FL Studio embedded SoundFont loading into the main application, no plug-in needed.

[UPDATE May 8, 2008] It seems Cakewalk bought up sfz, but the simple sfz is still free, I’ve updated the link above.

George from Walnut Creek points us at the NY Times: Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please? (free registration required) which discusses Yamaha’s VOCALOID technology. Basically, a vocalist’s sound font.

Probably the most realistic quote in this article was the producer that envisioned a future recording session like this:

We’ll see if a set of voice fonts authored at a university lab or a Yamaha clean room will be enough to make this a popular technology. Opening up the means to create the fonts is essential. Unfortunately:

oops.

[UPDATE] The Yamaha site makes you download a random audio player (in Japanese?). So as a service I captured two of the samples here as MP3s:

download
“Kimi no
uwasa”

On hearing these I think maybe we’ve jumped the gun just a little… I don’t think the Bart announcer is quite ready to take on a cotton field spiritual…

[Son of Update] Metafilter took a spin on this one, including an evisceration by ZD-Net in March.

“Freq. Mix“

[ listen ]
[ download ]

Alicia, over at audible frequency is a great example of a sound collector. While it’s more art project than sound design at a studio or film quality, there’s still a neat ambience to her captures. Click on Vincent on the right to hear a quick mix I did with some of her collected sounds.

ACID has a checkered past with standards:

• it’s native sound format is Microsoft’s WAV (with a modification known to be ACIDizing which is now an unofficial standard)
• preferred sound drivers were standard Windows (albiet slow to pick up WDM) but they now also support ASIO
• DirectX (instead of VSi) for effects, but VST (instead of DXi) for softsynths
• Window’s DLS instead of the more widely used SoundFont (SF2).

So….. if you want to use SoundFonts with ACID we recommend the cheapest (but solid) VSTi SoundFont player we could find.

[UPDATE] …or free.

The year was 2493 BC. Egyptians were erecting obelisks in temporary drainable sand pits the size of Seahawks Stadium. (OK, so I have no idea what I’m talking about, just pretend.) That same year music editing tools were hesitant to include unlimited undo levels because silicon resources were scarce along the Nile and editing big honkin’ music files made despots especially conservative.

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Speaking of Computer Music magazine: it’s rather dated in terms of specific applications, but this is a good introduction to SoundFonts.

The SF2 file format remains an important technology in sampling and virtual turntablism.