Hey Frank,

In your thread about your system you were saying something about Kontact 2 not being up to snuff on the patch change capability but maybe later in the year NI would get that fixed. I'm curious about what is missing with the Collosus NI player, ie, what won't it do that you want to do?

Right now they've got a half price sale on EWQLSO Gold Edition, ie, until the end of june 2005 it's only $499 usd instead of $999 and since Collosus is still $999, that's a hard decision.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

Tom, I picked Collossus mainly because it has a high quality GM Wavetable. This includes GM compatible Drum Kits. So with some tweaking I could use Yamaha Styles and produce very high quality auto accompaniment.

Now the sample player that comes with Colossus does not support patch changes but Kontakt 2 claimed it did. Well, it doesn't yet....unless you are willing to load the GM Wavetable on each of the 16 channels. This would not be very pratical....or possible on most computers.

Now the other Library you mention, namely, EWQLSO Gold Edition, is a much higher quality set of instruments but not GM compatible. This is ok if you are going to use it for melody or lead voices and/or setup Kontakt 2 or the sample player it comes with to accommodate each style on an individual basis. This can be done. You would load the appropriate instrument set for each style and save it as a multi. You would then call up this multi and the style you wish to play and play the auto accompaniment. I don't know if this library has drum kits and whether they are GM Compatible. If they are not then you have a lot of work to revoice the drums instruments within each style....to much work!!!

So the bottomline is, if you just want to use this library to play very very very very high quality lead/melody voices then there is no problem. If you require patch changes (from the controller keyboard or style player) then there is problem until NI fixes it (version 2.1). Keep in mind you would need to purchase Kontakt 2 for this. The player that comes with the library will never beable to accept patch changes...at least NI have not indicated that it will in the future.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 05-23-2005).]

Thanks for the info, Frank.

My situation is slightly different. I'm primarily a church organist so I'm most comfortable with two keyboards, one above the other. I also have a paid for Tyros which I have no intention of getting rid of because it does a couple of things I really like. 1) it has a mono mode for use with solo instruments like flute, oboe, etc. so that I can't play two notes at the same time, just as those instruments can't. 2) it will transmit on midi channels 1, 2, & 3 in any combination, ie, 1 or 2 or 3 or 1 & 2, or 1 & 3, or 2 & 3, or 1 & 2 & 3. This allows me to use Gigastudio 2.54 with the Post Organs (Post Organ Tool Kit and Post Baroque Organ) and have up to 12 stops play at the same time because it is possible to link all four midi ports and then select any combination of channels 1, 2, or 3 and play them.

I am however, about ready to get a CME UF7 76 key controller to use on the bottom and put the Tyros on the top. One of the things I really like about the CME UF7 is that they put the extra 15 keys all at the bottom, where they are most needed, rather than putting 8 at the bottom and 7 at the top like most companies. In addition it has 9 sliders and 8 knobs that are all assignable to midi controllers, and is made out of duraluminum and still only weighs 26 pounds.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

Tom, nice to see you are using some very high quality synths and instruments. I believe GigaStudio 2.5 and 3.0 are able to accept patch changes from your keyboards. Due to copy protection, it is not possible to convert encrypted Kontakt files to GigaStudio. In the old days you could purchase almost any file format and convert it to the one you were using. The conversions were not perfect but good enough to get you started.