What Is an SFPACK File?

SFPACK files contain compressed audio files in the SF2 format

By
Tim Fisher
Photo of Tim Fisher, Lifewire GM and Writer
Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

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Updated on November 28, 2022

What to Know

  • An SFPACK file is a set of compressed SoundFont (SF2) files.
  • You can decompress it to the SF2 audio format with SFPack.
  • SONAR is one program that can open the extracted SF2 file.

This article explains what an SFPACK file is and how to open one on your computer.

What Is an SFPACK File?

A file with the SFPACK file extension is an SFPack compressed SoundFont (.SF2) file. It's similar to other archive formats (like RAR, ZIP, and 7Z) but is used specifically for storing SF2 files.

The audio files held in this kind of archive are sample clips that are often used in software applications and video games.

SFPACK Files
SFPACK Files.

How to Open an SFPACK File

SFPACK files can be opened with Megota Software's portable program SFPack through the Add Files button. It will unpack the SF2 files.

After you extract the files from the download, open SFPACK.EXE. You'll need to change the Files of type option to SFPack Files to let the program find the right file type.

SFPack should be all you need, but if it doesn't work, you might have luck using a general file extractor tool like 7-Zip or PeaZip.

Once you've extracted an SF2 file, you can open it with SONAR from Cakewalk, Native Instruments' KONTAKT, MuseScore, and possibly Reason Studio's ReCycle. Since SF2 is based on the WAV format, it's possible that any program that opens WAV files can also play SF2 files (but probably only after you rename it to .WAV).

You might have an SFPACK file that's used for an entirely different purpose, completely unrelated to SoundFont files. One thing you can do is open it with a text editor to see if there's any sort of identifiable text that can help you learn what program was used to create that specific SFPACK file. If you can do that, you might be able to research a compatible viewer for the file.

How to Convert an SFPACK File

Since SFPACK files are really similar to other archive file types, it's highly unlikely that you can convert the file itself into another format. Plus, even if you could, it would only be able to convert to another archive format, which wouldn't really be of any use.

However, what you might be interested in is converting an SF2 file (it's stored within the SFPACK file) to another format. There are a few options here depending on how you want to proceed:

  • Xtrakk should be able to convert SF2 to WAV. A free audio converter can then convert that WAV file to a different audio format like MP3
  • Polyphone supports exporting SF2 to SF3 (which is like an SF2 file but uses the OGG audio format instead of WAV)
  • The sfZed tool can save SF2 to SFZ
  • Extreme Sample Converter is another program that might be able to convert an SF2 file

Still Can't Open It?

Lots of file types share some of the same file extension letters. This makes it easy to confuse one for another, even if they're completely unrelated. When this happens, you might run into errors when trying to open a file that the program you have doesn't support.

For example, maybe you really have an SFP file. It sure looks similar to SFPACK, but it's really in the Soft Font Printer format, which only works with printer utilities.

PACK is similar. Upon closer inspection, however, that file extension is used for CustoPack Tools for customizing themes in Windows.

The idea here is simple: if the programs mentioned above won't open your file, you're probably dealing with something completely different. Research the real extension at the end of your file to learn more about the format and how to open or convert it.

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