What are SoundFonts?
SoundFonts are similar in idea to regular fonts (Typefaces). An ordinary font will take a piece of text and give it a different look and style. A SoundFont will take a piece of MIDI music and give it a different sound by replacing some or all of the MIDI instruments with new sounds. A SoundFont can be something as simple as a new wavetable instrument set, or as complex as the vocals for a song. As far as I know, only Creative sound cards (SB AWE32 and up) can use SoundFonts, and you must have enough memory to load the desired SoundFont. (See your card’s documentation for more information.) There are a few programs which use ordinary SoundFonts as the wavetable bank for a wavetable emulator, too. Of course, that does not mean that other cards can not use things somewhat similar to SoundFonts. Many other newer sound cards allow you to load new wavetable sound patches and have their own SoundFont-like files. (And this is all ancient history to you GUS fans out there.) And Microsoft has it
