The following are my impressions of Utopia Live! but the first question I should answer is just what is Utopia Live!? It is a GM instrumental/GS percussion replacement soundfont for Creative's Sound Blaster Live! If you have a Sound Blaster Live you may or may not be aware of the awesome MIDI power that is lurking under the hood of your engine. If you are not into MIDI you may also be saying who cares but there is an incredible variety of quality MIDI files available on the internet including tons of quality original materials. These files are much much smaller than MP3 files and if you are into classical or instrumental music offer a tremendous entertainment value. I am digressing somewhat, but my point is that there has been so much focus by sites such as ours on the fact that General MIDI is not being used by very many games that we, and others, have to a large extent overlooked the large collection of quality MIDI music on the internet.

So what is special about Utopia Live?!

Everything in Utopia Live! was developed specifically for the Sound Blaster Live! and has been optimized to work specifically with the LiveWare 2.x (and newer) drivers to produce a better sound and long term compatibility.

Utopia Live offers the following key features:

• 31.5 MB of highly optimized looped samples, stored in a way to make the best possible use of the SB Live! 8 point interpolation. Using the same samples on other soundcards would have very poor results. Because of
  this they were able to put in things like a stereo percussion set

• a full GM instrumental set and 5 GS percussion sets

• extreme multilayering, while avoiding polyphony drops. According to the Utopia Sound Division, the 64 polyphony offered by the EMU10K1 DSP is utilized to do some fancy multilayering which enabled them to build some incredible instruments. The way they used multiple layers is impossible on any other low/mid range priced soundcard currently available. Basically the way the EMU10K1 DSP handles the 64 polyphony allowed the Utopia Sound Division to pull of things they could do on no other consumer level product

• 'STEREO' percussion

• very balanced, near to the Roland SoundCanvas cards

• Free future updates available from their internet site

The result according to the Utopia Sound Division is a sound/depth, which no other GM/GS soundfont has touched yet (taking 64+ MB soundfonts into account)!

All of the sounds are unique and found in no other soundfont. Apparently, most free soundfonts on the net are made from instruments 'ripped' from other soundfonts resulting in most soundfonts having a lot of the same instruments/percussion. In many cases this results in an unbalanced sound (and if you care, those free sound fonts are quite often illegal, as they have used copyrighted source material).

One of the most important things about the Utopia Live! soundfont is that it is balanced to match the Roland SoundCanvas's balance (not it's sound) as close as possible. Well what does this mean? After half a year of work the Utopia Sound Division basically had the soundfont finished but after that they (with the help of a large group of beta-testers) spend another half year just on balancing (which is: getting correct loudness levels, tweaking sounds etc..) to ensure as best as possible playback on Roland-made MIDI files. By doing this Utopia Live! sounds (almost) perfectly balanced on most types of music styles as long as the MIDI file is sequenced for the Roland S.C. GM standard (which is the format which most MIDI files are in). Roel de Wit of Utopia Sound Division was rather emphatic when he told me that this is something that up until now ALL 'free' soundfonts lack. From his perspective, the only other really good balanced GM/GS soundfonts are the EMU soundfonts including the ones that come with the SB Live! range of soundcards. Another thing that should noted that Utopia Live! main 'aim' was this balance, not reality. If you are like me then that might sound a little odd as I also though that reality was the ultimate goal of wavetable instrumentation so let me try and explain the logic of balance over reality.

If you set out to make a soundfont, what you might do is look for or make the best sounding most realistic reproduction of a given instrument/percussion. You would go from instrument to instrument and generate this fantastic collection of ultra realistic sounds that you would bundle together and call a soundfont. Now, if all you use this soundfont for is solo use then you will get just what you expected…a fantastic reproduction of that instrument. However, when you use that same soundfont to play a standard GM MIDI file with many instruments playing at the same time, it's more than likely that the instruments will not sound good in combination with each other. A sound font that sounds great with solos is practically useless for GM MIDI playback. This is why the Utopia Live! soundfont places balance above realism. This means that when the Utopia Live! soundfont was being developed, having nearly all combinations of instruments sound good was the priority with the 'reality of the individual sounds' for solos still important, but secondary to the big picture. As you have read above, a very significant amount of time and beta testing went into that final process to get the most balance, best sounding GM soundfont possible.

Speaking of instrument quality, the quality of the sounds offered by the Utopia Live! soundfont was 'shared' over the WHOLE set of samples, not only spend on a few instruments, which again is apparently a feature that no other soundfont has yet to offer! Most only aim at some high profile instruments like the strings and french horns and let these take a disproportionate amount of the sample size. The more MIDI you listen to the more this overall quality offered by the Utopia Live! soundfont will become apparent.

'STEREO' percussion! This is something all other GM/GS soundfonts lack as it uses more space. The Utopia Live! soundfont uses using a special technique for enhancing the stereo effect/depth and also has some stereo instruments. Most non-stereo instruments have a 'simulated stereo effect' (not done with a much less effective chorus effect like most other soundfonts do). To my ears the 'stereo' percussion was quite simply worth whatever space it took in the Utopia Live! soundfont. The sound stage expands by leaps and bounds and the overall enhancement to the listening experience is simply phenomenal.

Abit SP50

Altec Lansing ACS 56

Altec Lansing ACS 54

Altec Lansing ADA880 Dolby Digital

Altec Lansing ATP3

Boston Acoustics BA4800

Boston Acoustics BA7500

Cambridge Soundworks FPS1000

Cambridge SoundWorks FPS2000 digital

Cambridge SoundWorks 2.1 Digital

Cambridge SoundWorks DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT2500

Cambridge SoundWorks DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT3500

Cambridge SoundWorks MegaWorks 510D

Diamond Audio Technology ProMedia 3205

Klipsch ProMedia 2.1

Klipsch ProMedia 4.1

Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 Initial Review

Labtec APX 4620 Review

Labtec Edge-418 Flat Panel

Labtec's LCS-2514

Logitech SoundMan Xtrusio DSR-100

Logitech Z-560 Initial Review

MidiLand MLi-490

MidiLand S4-7100

MidiLand S4-7100 Plus

Monsoon MM-1000

Monsoon MM-2000

Philips MMS305 4.1 Initial Review

Polk Audio AMR-150

Polk Audio AMR-130

Videologic Sirocco

Videologic Sirocco Pro

Videologic DigiTheatre 5.1

VideoLogic DigiTheatre DTS

Videologic Sirocco Crossfire