Vquestor, yes it is possible to create an XG Wavetable. That would be a great deal of work in finding suitable sounds and then appropriately balancing them.

I started with sYnerGiGs which is a GM/GS wavetable which includes the XG drums in bank 127. The Yamaha Styles will pick an appropriate GM sound if it cannot find one in the appropriate XG bank and program numbers. For 99% of the styles you get a very good result. In others you may have to add a more suitable sound in the appropriate bank/program. Where I have expended effort on is replacing ordinary sounds in the sYnerGiGS wavetable with higher quality sounds, e.g., ordinary 2mb piano with Nemesys 70mb piano (converted from GigaStudio to Soundfont). The wavetable I currently use is approximately 128 MB (the original was 32 - 44 MB). It is, of course, not just the size of the sound that matters but also the engineering and the original recorded quality of the instrument in question.

Jos, you are right the standard is 0 - 127 but some wavetables come numbered 1 - 128. It is for this reason that VSampler, Audigy Soundcard, etc. have a provision to remap these banks and patch numbers. As I pointed out this is not a critical issue for me. Far more important is the correct drum instrument assignments with respect to the note numbers. I can usually find a way to pick up the correct drum kit, e.g., Jazz Kit, etc.

Jos, again thanks for all your help.

Thanks Frank. I'm sure it was a herculean
amount of work, but well worth the result. Could you please tell me what the easiest program is to replace banks with ones of your
choosing ,for XP home(e.g.,Audio compositor, Alive,or something else)?
Is it possible for a wavetable in LiveSynth to respond to Program Change #s to change drumkits that have the same Bank Select MSB and LSB #s?
BTW, have you switched over from Kontakt
to Vsampler3, and does Vsampler now accept
bank select and program change messages?

I understand Joe. You're program is excellent at what it does, and improves with each release, so no sense messing with a good thing. Algo's can be made to work realistically with midi files, but there seems to be a ton of work involved. It has taken Soundtrek several years to integrate the two into their latest Jammer version, and they still don't quite have all the kinks worked out, though they are rapidly approaching it.

AJ

Vquestor, if you are talking about Soundfont GM/GS/XG Wavetables, I would say Alive and Vienna are the best to use. These programs make it easy to change/enhance the instruments and drum kits of your choice.

Audio Compositor returns error messages when you have more then a certain number of total bits of information/waves in a bank. I think the number is something like 16256 - just a guess. I know it returns errors trying to edit the sYnerGiGs Wavetable. I corresponded with the author and he indicated that it would be considerable work to modify his program.

Vquestor, so far LiveSynthPro sounds and responds the best to program & bank changes. It works - near flawlessly - well with Yamaha styles and styles converted to Yamaha format. You may need to do some adjustments in the mixer but that is it. I would go further and say it works as well as the Creative Audigy 1 or 2. VSampler sounds very good but work is needed with the drums. You need to go into all the styles and change all the drum tracks to channel 10 and then change the Yamaha bank number from 16256 (I think it is) to 127 - then everything works. The advantage of VSampler is that I can call it up as a VSTi and thereby do everything in Cubase SX. Finally, all this assumes you use the sYnerGiGS Wavetable with XG Drums. If you use a Wavetable without XG Drums then I believe there is considerable work to transform the XG drum kit instruments (snare, tom, brush tap, etc.) to lineup with (as best as possible) with drum kits you are using, e.g., GM/GS. This is not as confining as it sounds. With Alive or Vienna you can take any of the dozens of Soundfont GM Wavetables and lob off the GM drums and afix the sYnerGiGS XG drums and you have a new sound and a new experience!!! If you use Wavetables other than Soundfonts, life becomes more complex and less flexible, e.g., Edirol's HQ Hyper Canvas, etc.

There is another small issue when it comes to selecting drums. If you have a Yamaha Style which uses say Live!Latin or something and your Wavetable does not have this drum kit at all, you could end up with a piano playing, dogs howling and so on. It would be a challenge to win the top music award!!! This is easy to fix. I use CASMEdit to replace drums with the ones that I got in my wavetable. This is fast and easy. There are other programs you could use for this as well, e.g., StyleMaker/Cakewalk, OMB (I think) etc.

For my lead or melody voices I will continue to use Kontakt. You can use very high quality instruments. This kind of quality is overkill for live performances but for home & studio - it feels (sounds) so good!!! Halion is a good choice for this as well.

I hope this helps.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 07-02-2003).]