The SoundFont file format gives users the ability to create digital sampled instruments that are portable across different hardware. The idea being that an instrument could be created on a computer using an AWE 32 card and then transferred to a piece of recording equipment for studio production or to another computer with a different wavetable card etc. Since sound fonts are most commonly used to compose music, they are closely tied to the MIDI.

SOURCE: Josh Green (jgreen@users.sourceforge.net)