The SFZ Format is widely accepted as the open standard to define the behavior of a musical instrument from a bare set of sound recordings. It was created by René Ceballos (founder of RGC Audio™) and is now maintained by Cakewalk™. Being a royalty-free format, any developer can create, use and distribute SFZ files and players for either free or commercial purposes.

The SFZ format consists of one or more text files a set of sound sample files.

The learn more about SFZ, please visit theres resources:

• Official SFZ 1.0 specification (archived) previously on Cakewalk™ website.
• Official SFZ 2.0 specification in chapter 13 and Appendix of the book “Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User – 2nd Edition”. by Simon Cann. (No official documentation is available online.)
• Unofficial SFZ format information.

ARIA and the SFZ format

To provide a maximum of flexibility and portability, SFZ was chosen as the basis for ARIA’s default instrument file format. ARIA is highly SFZ 2.0 compliant and also contains custom extensions for added flexibility and control for product designers.

ARIA is in active development since 2005. The compliance with the SFZ standard is constantly improving. To learn more about ARIA’s compliance with SFZ format, join us in the forums!