Sibelius homepage

Sound sets for Sibelius 1 to 4

Looking for sound sets for Sibelius 5? Click here.

What's a sound set?

A sound set (or 'patch file' in Sibelius 1.x) is a file that lists all the available sounds (programs) on a specific MIDI device (such as an external sound module or synthesizer). Sibelius supports a number of MIDI devices 'out of the box', but additional files are available for download from this page.

We intend to develop further sound sets for other popular MIDI devices. We welcome suggestions on the chat page.

If you have written a sound set for a MIDI device and would like to share it with other Sibelius users, please contact us.

Because these sound sets support third party products, we provide these for your benefit but cannot offer detailed technical support on their use, but feel free to discuss these on the chat page.

Write your own sound sets

If your MIDI device is not supported by Sibelius and is not listed here, you could try to write one for yourself. Sibelius 3 and 4 includes a built-in sound set editor for the easy creation of sound sets.

If you wish to create files yourself "by hand", download this documentation:

  • Sibelius 1.4 users: download (PDF, 30K).
  • Sibelius 2 users: download (PDF, 113K).
  • Sibelius 3 users: download (PDF, 110K).

(To download, you should right click - or Control-click on Mac - on the link and choose Save target as... or Save to disk...)

Patchez - a sound set creation program for Sibelius 2

A Sibelius user, Michael Radtke, has created a utility for the creation of Sibelius 2 soundsets called Patchez. This software is released as beerware - it's free to download but if you like it, you owe the author a beer. The program is available for Windows users only, and can be downloaded here.

Sound sets created with Patchez will not work in Sibelius 3 and above; we recommend you use Sibelius 4's built-in sound set editor to create sound sets for Sibelius 4 (or Sibelius 3).

How to use these sound sets

Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) on the links below and choose Save target as... or Save to disk... from the menu that appears. Choose to save the file to your disk, and when prompted for a location to save the file, locate the Sounds folder within your Sibelius program folder.

To use the patch file:

  • Choose Play > Playback and Input Devices (Play > Devices in Sibelius 2 & 3, Play/Flexi-time > Equipment in Sibelius 1.x)
  • For your chosen playback device, select the desired device from the Sound Set column (Patch column in Sibelius 1.x).
  • If asked to reset sounds when you open existing files, click Yes.

Sibelius 4 sound sets

There are no new soundsets available for Sibelius 4 as all the latest files are included with the program on the CD.
If the soundset you are looking for is not available in the program then please see the 'Write your own soundsets' section above.

Sibelius 3 sound sets

Sibelius 2 sound sets

Sibelius 1.x patch files

Alesis

EMU

General MIDI

  • General MIDI 2
    (should use instead of supplied patch file with Sibelius v1.4)

Korg

Kurzweil

Roland

Yamaha

*Notes for users of the sound sets supplied by Ed Masters

Users who download the soundsets for the Yamaha PSR-9000 or E-mu Virtuoso with expansion boards above may be interested in the following information from Ed Masters, who compiled these sound sets:

"I modified the default instruments to reference different instruments versus the previous Sibelius defaults. In the case of the PSR-9000, I mapped the previous default instruments to the PSR-9000's 'panel' sounds (much better sound quality), but did not change the associated program number, only the bank number changed for the higher quality sound. This should be viewed as a good thing by PSR-9000 users.

"In the case of the Virtuoso 2000, I utilized some of the Planet Earth ethnic instruments as default instruments where appropriate (E.g., Banjo). Also, in my situation if the default sound was not correct (E.g., Celeste for an Accordion), I changed the default instrument to point to the Virtuoso's special patch "version number", which means no sound will play.

For me, I have other instruments that can supply the appropriate sounds, so I would rather have no sound than an incorrectly mapped sound. Some users may not like this approach. If in fact you would prefer to use the previous Virtuoso 2000 instrument defaults, no problem as I did not change
the numeric order of the previous instrument definitions - I only added the expansion ROM instruments after the previous instrument definitions. You should be able to copy and paste the old instrument defaults section into the new sound set file.

"I also modified the groups in both sound sets to better match my needs. I think my approach is intuitive, but again you can easily change this if desired. To help organize, cross-reference and sort the groups correctly, I used Word and Excel (with a generous helping of macros) to create an Excel spreadsheet with each patch number/name located in the appropriate section, then sorted appropriately per group. It is easy to sort each group in the Excel spreadsheet, copy and paste the resulting first column into the sound set file edited with Word (the first column in the Excel spreadsheet has the associated group labels and instrument numbers), then using a Word macro easily add the appropriate quotes and brackets.

"Should you want to do this, download the Excel files here."

Back to top »