I downloaded Roland's HQ Orchestral softsynth out of curiosity, since classical or orchestral music is not what I know. I can barely recognise an oboe from a clarinet and sometimes not.

Anyway, I was blown off by the quality. Speaking with numbers, this softsynth has around 80 MB of sounds, and Hyper Canvas has around 25 MB, having also more instruments. Wood organs and others, sound so much better, way more clarity and quality. It also contains a piano which made me drool.

The interface is quite good, easy to navigate.

I thought some of you would be interested to hear something other than the highly polished Roland demos, so I made a little piece, using oboe2 as the right hand sound, with very very low full strigs as a layer, played in realitme on a rather boring style I have on the Casio, called Concerto.

The "song" contains many mistakes, it was a "let's play using this style and some chords and see what happens".

I also have a fever (38.7 C) so I am at home and not in work. I tried to record a better "composition" but my fever had worsened, so you will have to live with this piece of ......

Enough with my wimping, the song is located at http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/trident/orchestra1.mp3

alternatively go to http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/trident/ and download orchestra1.mp3 from there

If you are interested, you can send me a midi file with a classical piece, and I'll try to send an mp3 back, so you can compare the quality yourself. Try not to have more than 16 tracks and no patch changes inside the racks, because I don;t know how to make it change the patch!!! Lame, ehh
t r i d e n t @a t h.f o r t h n e t.g r, delete spaces where necessary

Cheers,
Theodore



[This message has been edited by trident (edited 06-07-2005).]

Boo hoo,
nobody seems to have noticed my post.

Anyway, I took down my piece and posted some midi medley of Starwars I had, this midi is quite good in my opinion.

This software continues to amaze me. Check the above link to download

Bye,
Theodore


[This message has been edited by trident (edited 06-08-2005).]

Hi Trident,
where did you find the demo of the actual HQ Orchestral soft synth? I've only ever found the demo's of Hypercanvas & Super Quartet.
I've heard the edirol demo's, but it's not the same unless one can try the software with their own choice of music.
I'm not overly wrapped in the piano in Hypercanvas(which I own) just wondering if the one in the orchestral synth is much better ( bear in mind, I'm a real fusspot when it comes to piano sounds (haahaa ) The closest I've come to being happy with a piano, is with a free clavinova soundfont(of 23mb) I found a while back. It works quite well with my xg styles.

best wishes
Rikki



[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 06-11-2005).]

Rikki,
the Concert Piano in HQ Orchestral (there is only one piano sound and one Harpsichord), is on an entirely different planet than the Hypercanvas is, at least to my ears. The quality is SO much better. If you like, send me a midi file in the above address, clearly stating which midi channel is which sound, and I'll be happy to send you an mp3 back.
How did you find the quality of the example I posted? Is it better than other softsynths that you have? worse?
Theodore

Hi Trident,
the piano I like best to date ( for my omb styles )is http://www.guraydere.com/soundfonts/sfdetails.aspx?kat=1
Clavinova 2 (7.5mb :24.5 mb)
I've managed to tweak it a bit get it sounding much like the grand piano sound in my clavinova clp170, so much so, hubby couldn't tell whether I was using the font or the clav for the style.

Hard to say whether it sounds better or worse than my soundfonts. Sound is pretty subjective. ie
I found a midifile of Vangelis's Antartica ( one of my favourite pieces of music)

I tried it with all the fonts I've managed to collect ( free & commercial)
synergi
papalmedia
sgm128
another xg
provitamin etc

the piece sounded different on all of them.
Some played some instruments better than others, whereas one may shine in woodwind , it was poor in strings. Beauty of the font system is, I can replace the sounds I don't like , with ones that I do. ie I replaced the existing piano in the gm font I'm using with the clavinova one I mentioned above.
Personally I'll probably end up staying with soundfonts, mainly because of the flexibility.

Don't know whether you're set up for using soundfonts, but one way of doing an ab comparison would be to download Synthfont
( sounfont midi player)http://www.synthfont.com/
and a soundfont like sgm128 http://www.sf2midi.com/index.php?page=sdet&id=5038
best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by trident:
[b]Rikki,


[This message has been edited by rikkisbears (edited 06-11-2005).]

Rikki,
send me this Antarctica midi file if you want, and I'll try to post an mp3 for you.
Regards,
theodore

The only problem with this software package is that it does not save the settings when you quit Cuabase. you need to setup another file and you have to load it manually every time for each song. This is completely annoying. I dont understand how come they never took care of it. I have emailed tech support about this already but didnt seem to care.

This is the ONLY plugin in the world that doesnt have this feature and I cant forgive this.