TOPIC: What are the differences between VST and SF2?

Hi guys,

I am a musician mostly write world music, and I have collected a lot's of ethnic instrument sound resources, and now I am currently working on to create some virtual instrument with these resources, and willing to share it free while I finish.

I've made some virtual instruments by other samplers such as Kontakt and the sampler of Logic pro x, which are very good tools but not convenient to pack up, also require people to use them with samplers.

Originally I was going to make a VST plugin, but here I find there is also a possibility to use SF2 as well, I like the interface and the open source environment of Polyphone, and musescore is also using sf2 form, so maybe more people will be able to use my virtual instrument if I release a SF2 version.

Now I am wondering how is SF2 different from VST? is there any advantage to pack up a virtual instrument as SF2?

sf2 is the most direct in playing the waveforms. in VSTs there are more possibilities to manipulate, but of course you have to wait until the computer is done with computing before you will hear anything. i prefer sf2, its always possible to convert from sf2 to any form of VSTi (which means; hanging a truckload of code on your samples).
so, go on in Polyphone!
success, bottrop

Thank you very much, good to know that SF2 is able to convert into VST. I will try to work with polyphone for a while then.

Have a good one!