The SFZ format was developed by René Ceballos (founder of rgc:audio software)[1] and continues to be used by companies such as Cakewalk, Plogue and Garritan.

SFZ is a royalty-free format and can be used by software developers for both free and commercial purposes.

The SFZ Format is widely accepted as an open standard to define the behavior of a musical instrument from a bare set of sound recordings.

The official page at the Cakewalk web-site is no longer available, however descriptions of the SFZ opcodes can be found on various websites.

Applications exist that provide a point-and-click GUI for creating SFZ files, as an alternative to editing the text directly.