As you may know, Final Fantasy VII takes advantage of SoundFont Technology if you have a SoundBlaster AWE or SoundBlaster Live! or Audigy series card.

FF7 came with some default SoundFonts, but the quality of these is arguably poor. If you have a SoundBlaster Live! card, and you have 64 or more Megs of RAM, you can Download and try mine and Threesixty's SoundFonts. I recommend you give them both a try.

To use my SoundFont, download the file above, then follow the instructions below:

• You'll need to download and install SFPack if you don't already have it.
• If you don't have WinRAR, rename 'ff7sbl16.rar' to 'ff7sbl16.exe' and 'sfpack.rar' to (likewise) 'sfpack.exe'. They are self extracting archives, you'll be able to run them now.
• Back up the original 'ff7.sf2' file in your c:\program files\squaresoft\ffvii\data\midi\sf2 folder. If you installed FF7 in a folder other than c:\program files\squaresoft\ffvii, you'll find the data\midi\sf2 folder inside the folder you installed FFVII in.
• Rename the LB2.sf2 font to something else (LB2.BAK, for example). It's in the same folder as ff7.sf2.
• Back up the AWE.LGP file (it'll be in the c:\program files\squaresoft\ffvii\data\midi, one folder up from where the other two files are.)
• Go to the Folder where the files that were extracted from the RAR file were copied.
• Expand the FF7.sfpack file (right click on it, go down to expand.) Copy the file you just expanded, 'ff7.sf2' (It'll be around 20 megs), to the c:\program files\squaresoft\ffvii\data\midi\sf2 folder.
• Copy the new AWE.LGP file (it came with the ff7.sfpack file) to the c:\program files\squaresoft\ffvii\data\midi folder.
• Open the Control Panel, and Double Click on the 'AudioHQ' Icon. When the AudioHQ window pops up, Double Click on the 'SoundFont' icon. If anything is listed in the box labeled 'Bank Stack:', select it and click the 'clear' button.
• Click on the 'Options' Tab. Drag the Slider in the 'SoundFont Cache' box to the right, until the number to the left of it is at 24.00 MB.
• Click the close button at the bottom of that window, and then close the 'AudioHQ' Window as well as the Control Panel.
• Open the FF7 Config program. Under 'MIDI', Select 'A: SB Live! MIDI Synth' as your MIDI driver; and 'Soundfont MIDI (Creative AWE32/64)' as your MIDI Data.
• Click 'OK' at the bottom of the FFVII config Window to confirm this selection. The next time you play FFVII, you'll notice a big improvement in the quality of the music.

Windows 2000/XP users will also need to follow the instructions set forth in the ReadmeXP.txt file included with the Soundfont.