Looking for GM soundbanks

Java Sound & OpenAL
#1

I’ve been playing around with the three soundbanks available on http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/sound/soundbanks.html, and don’t really like any of them. (As far as I can tell, they contain identical data for each of the default MIDI instruments). I’m looking for something of better quality, but which is also isn’t too big so I can also distribute nicely with my game.

I’ve been searching the internet, but can’t come up with any decent leads on good .gm files. Are there any out there?

#2

Windows Media Player has a really great soundbank. I usually play a midi through that and record it from my soundcard (and I usually convert that to OGG or something similiar since no soundbank is needed for that)

not sure if WMP supports .gm, but it’s worth a shot

#3

Looks interesting. How would I record from my soundcard, or convert to OGG format?

#4

recording from your soundcard is easy if you have a line-out port (think headphones) and a mic-in port (or auxillary in, as long as it fits the same size jack of a headphone set). just grab a line-to-line cord, which is just like a headphone cord except their are two jacks instead of just one. plug that cord into both the line-out and mic-in ports and you’re ready to go.

you can record the sound with a program like Audacity, which happens to convert to OGG. Other free players such as MediaMonkey will convert to OGG, but as far as I know doesn’t record sound.

Audacity also has the ability to import .MID files, though I’m not sure what the soundbank sounds like.

note that line-in jacks are not supposed to be used as a mic-in, though it is possible. for best results you should use an auxillary-in port if you have one (usually marked as a blue port, whereas mic is red and line-out is green)

#5

To record from your soundcard output, you don’t need to connect anything or any any cables.

  • Open up your volume control (double click the speaker icon in the system tray)
  • Options -> Properties
  • Select recording and make sure you have ticked the ‘wave out mix’ option
  • Click OK
  • Select the ‘mix out’ (sometimes it’s called a bit different) in de ‘recording control’ which shows up

You will record anything that plays through your sound card, as soon as you record something using the sound recording tool of your liking.

#6

If you can get hold of Final Fantasy VII then it comes with all of its sounds banks on the CD