Kirjat
94b soundbank format was used by some Hoontech and Guillemot soundcards back in the late nineties and early 2000’s. Both companies still manufacture hardware with different brand names, but I don’t think there is any soundcard still in production using the 94b format. Synths or samplers built into a soundcard itself are rare these days, replaced by soft synths.
Some of the nineties’ soundbank formats still persist in soft synths, most notably SoundFont used by several SoundBlaster cards and many others. 94b is, however, more or less gone. Apparently the format was so complex (or messy) that those kind people who write format conversion tools have stayed away from it. I think there used to be a conversion tool from SoundFonts to 94b (that didn’t work well), but not vice versa. So, even back then, if you wanted sounds for your Guillemot or Hoontech soundcard and didn’t find what you wanted in what was available at Guillemot and Hoontech sites, you just had to build your own. Some of the people did, myself included. We made what we made and had found available to others in a true community spirit. That became increasingly important as the production of 94b soundcards ended and commercial sites with any 94b content vanished during the early 2000’s.
Actually, one of the reasons I originally set up the Yrttimaa.net domain was to keep my 94b collection available after I switched ISPs and lost the web space provided by the former ISP. Since then I have been building my career as a sf writer and literary translator, so soundbank exchange isn’t one of the priorities here in this site. Several times I have planned to take my 94b collection down, but looking at the logs I see they’re still being downloaded. Occasional thank you emails confirm this. Apparently, there still is a 94b user base.
Note: My own Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS soundcard kicked the bucket more than half a decade ago. I have no means to edit 94b’s, not even open them. I have no idea if any of these banks still work. What you get is what you get. The information about each bank are written years ago, too.
94b banks made by me
Programming 94b soundbanks wasn’t particularly easy task, given that the only tool I had available was Guillemot’s own software. Anyway, I came up with a few banks of my own, constructed from samples collected from various locations – and, in some cases, even recorded by me. (The word ”Mwah” in some of the bank names refers to the username I’ve been using in serveral music related forums.)
MwahBank (v. 3)”Global Midi”
• Instruments 0 to 126 • Variation 0 • plus Drumkit 0 • Compressed size: 28 504 Kb • ISIS memory size: 37214.4 Kb
This 37 MB soundbank is my modification of the GM soundset, with synth and effect sounds replaced with various ethnic and stringed instruments. The zip file contains a text file with instrument allocations. There’s only one drumkit, a Version 3 of the drumkit below. The soundbank uses multisamples quite a bit, so some sounds eat polyphony a lot.
There is a construction kit (about 34 MB as zipped) available, including all the samples and .94i files (and other stuff - the kit’s pretty chaotic after a few revisions and modifications).
MwahDrums (v. 4)
• Drumkit 0 (Standard) • variation 0 • Compressed size: 17 131 Kb • ISIS memory size: 27 993.5 Kb
This is supposed to be pretty organic, acoustic and natural sounding drumkit with a sense of room and a rather rattly snare. The stereo spread is rather wide, probably too wide for the most of the users; but it’s always easier to narrow the spread than to widen. Also, the kit is pretty dry (not much reverb and effects). You can always add reverb and stuff later, but they are a drag to get out. The soundbanks uses multisampling in a very non-cost-effective way: with every sound, there is usually several different samples playing. And, in this case, almost all are stereo samples. So this drummer eats polyphony. A lot. That’s one of the reasons there aren’t any other instruments in the bank. I made the soundbank for my recording purposes, to be recorded separately, so I can dedicate all the polyphony of the soundcard to this single instrument. This is an modified version of the original drumkit soundbank I compiled around 2003. The new version adds some sounds (rototoms, cymbal flams and swells) and has some silent notes to be used as cymbal mutes. Also, the crash cymbals are new and the overall balance between the different parts of the drumkit is better (at least, to my ears).
MwahDrums (v. 3)
• Drumkit 0 (Standard) • variation 0
• Compressed size: 5664 Kb • ISIS memory size: 8919.2 Kb
This is a eight meg drumkit to replace the GM/GS standard kit. The actual drumkit is where it should be, but the latin stuff has been replaced mainly with more ethnic percussion. The kit is rather dry, to add effects as needed on the later stages. This soundbank uses multisamples, so it does eat polyphony. This version replaces the standard drumkit sounds (kicks, snares, toms, cymbals) with new samples and programs. This almost doubles the memory consumption.
Djembe
• Instrument 119 • (Synth Drum) • variation 0 • Compressed size: 1377 Kb • ISIS memory size: 2328.5 Kb
This is my take on the classic African drum. The various sounds a djembe makes have been assigned on the notes corresponging roughly on the GM drumkit, ie. you got the full thump on the bass drum note (B) and so on. There are also foot bells and some darbuka sound two octaves up. This soundbank uses multisamples, so it does eat polyphony. Stereo.
The Kit
Channel 10 • Instrument 24 • variation 0 • Compressed size: 416 Kb • ISIS memory size: 619.9 Kb
For a couple of years in mid-eighties, I owned a curious little drum machine called The Kit, made by an English company called MPC. It was an analog device, but different from the norm by having patterns only for the hihat. Other sounds (bass drum, snare, hihat, two toms and a crash cymbal) were played by hitting small pads with your fingers. The pads were even mildly velocity-sensitive, and there were multiple outputs for each pad, should you’ve wanted to connect the Kit to a mixer or a multitracker. Besides using The Kit with my cassette 4-tracker, I had it sometimes at our band’s rehearsals. Our drummer’s car wasn’t too reliable during the winter months, so sometimes he asked me to take The Kit to our rehearsal room so he’d have something to play with. It was pretty hard not to laugh watching this serious, well-dressed young man, with tie, playing the toy-like pads with ball-end toy drumsticks (real drumsticks would have been too much for the unit).
Being an analog machine, the sounds didn’t actually sound much like ”real” drums. And the unit was rather noisy. So I replaced The Kit with much more boring Yamaha machine (and that with a Roland, and that with a Boss, and that with a Korg DRM-1 I still have but don’t use much, as I have the NI Kontakt software sampler) without much sorrow. Fifteen years later I was browsing the web and came across Audio Playground’s Virtual Syntethiser Museum full of playable virtual drum machines. And there I found The Kit again, now in a noiseless virtual form. Oh, didn’t those funny little sounds bring back memories... I contacted Audio Playground’s Joseph Rivers and asked a permission to use The Kit samples for a .94 soundbank. And so... here it is. This soundbank expands the original a bit, with extra toms, extra kick, pedal hihat and a ride cymbal. So if you want to be purist, use only Kick 1, Snare 2, Closed and open HH, Low Tom, High Tom and Crash Cymbal. Other sounds are just manipulations of those samples. Stereo.
Fretless Rickenbacker
• Instrument 33 (Fretless Bass) • Variation 0 • Compressed size: 1269 Kb • ISIS memory size: 1864 Kb
This is my own heavily modified, de-fretted ’74 Rickenbacker 4001 with a DiMarzio humbucker as bridge pickup. It was recorded through a ECC82 tube equipped ART Tube MP preamp straight to ISIS. As a soundbank this is a bit edgy and don’t emphasize the ’fretless-ness’ that much (no chorus or such programmed in). This soundbank uses multisamples to keep the sound a bit more uniform across the scale.
Other 94b soundbanks
Grab bag
This 161 MB zip file includes all the other 94b soundbanks I have. There’s no documentation other than the filenames. Some of them were made by other members of our little community, but most are downloaded from ISIS and Hoontech sites when they still existed.