Sometimes you download a SoundFont and it is compressed as a .sfArk or a .sfpack file. This page shows you how to de-compress these files.

Decompressing .sfArk Files

You can extract .sfArk files using the command-line application called sfarkxtc.

First, download and extract the utility:

 cd ~/Studio/SoundFonts/
 mkdir sfark
 cd sfark
 wget http://falcony.googlecode.com/files/sfarkxtc_lx86.tar.gz
 tar -xzf sfarkxtc_lx86.tar.gz

You will also require the older libstdc++5, so install that: sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

Now, change to your SoundFonts directory, and then extract all of the .sfArk files.

 cd ~/Studio/SoundFonts/
 for i in *.sf[Aa]rk ; do sfark/sfarkxtc "$i" && rm "$i" ; done

That's all there is to it!

Decompressing .sfpack Files

Unfortunately, we don't know of a way to extract these SFPack compressed SoundFont files in Linux without resorting to Wine.

Download the SFPack Win32 utility, and put it in its own directory.

• cd ~/Studio/SoundFonts/ wget ftp://ftp.personalcopy.net/pub/SFPack.zip unzip SFPack.zip rm SFPack.zip

Install Wine, if you haven't got it installed already.

• sudo apt-get install wine

You will need to configure it so that you have access to your ~/Studio/SoundFonts directory, or anywhere higher up than this.

• winecfg

I recommend you add a drive letter specifically for your ~/Studio directory.

After this, launch the SFPack utility:

• wine sfpack/SFPACK.EXE

• Click on the Add Files button.

• Select SFPack Files (*.SFPack) from the Files of Type dropdown.

• Browse to find your .sfpack file.
• Double-click on it.

• Finally, click on the Go! button on the toolbar.

Once this is complete, you will have the uncompressed file in the same directory as the .sfpack file.