BTW, I think Collosus can be used in Kontakt 2, which can respond to program changes.

Hi Esh,
I have forte/livesynth pro/midiyoke for my soundfont/omb setup or I use a usb audigy nx2. I haven't bought any of the more expensive sample based players mainly because I use piano sound for melody/lead
( I have a Yamaha CLP170 piano for that, and as a controller). I must admit Frank keeps whetting my apetite whith all these fancy sampled sounds.

I gather the M Audio doesn't respond to program changes either? or have I got that wrong.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Esh:
[B]

Clif, Yes Colossus & Kontakt do respond to program changes but to slow for live performances. In addition, you would need to raise another instance of kontakt if you require more than one drum kit....I think.

So yes there is hope. If Esh is right that Bandstand is a much smaller version of Colossus things may load quick enough for live performances....including situation where instruments are changed within say a style or midi file as it is playing.

My guess is we are very close to a very good outcome.

Garritan's GPO and Jazz & Big Band are of a size with DFD to fit totally into RAM. Program changes in Kontakt could work here as well. The conversion of Giga's GM500 to kontakt may also work.

Rikki, I think you should abandon all your friends and your Yamaha and replace it with NI's Akoustic Piano & and a 76 (or 88) note controller keyboard. You just can't lose. You will never look back. You will forever be happy. You will sit back in your music room and smile as the world passes you by and others keep buying hardware only to do it again in a short few months. Plus it sounds better than most other pianos found in workstations or arranger keyboards. Oh, if you buy kontakt 2 then you get with it a very good version of the Steinway Pianos....and there are so many other better alternatives.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 11-09-2005).]

Cliff: Colossus responds to your own program changes but not to GM midi file program changes. You can create your own program multi-patch setups and recall them but it takes too long for live use, as Frank said. And that's just to load the attack sample - the rest of the sound actually streams directly from disk. It can take up to a minute to load a multi-patch with all the sounds you normally need for a song. The goal is to find a quality GM-compatible softsynth that can respond quickly to program changes like hardware synths can... Bandstand has that potential even though it uses the same load-attack/stream-from-disk architecture as Colossus. We'll know for sure soon when Frank gets his copy of Bandstand.

Rikki: you and I are in the same situation... I'm primarily a pianist. I dislike the idea of having a controller that makes no sound of it's own but Frank is right - the piano sounds I get from Colossus are vastly superior to anything I've heard in any digital piano bar none. If the piano sound in Bandstand is comparable to the Steinway D in Colossus then it will be the centerpiece of my new all-softsynth live setup.

I don't own a copy of Key Rig yet but I intend to. I think it's cool and I can use it... I'll probably go ahead and order it today since Frank has volunteered to go out on the Bandstand limb for us. I honestly don't know if it'll respond to program changes from GM midi files quickly. It SHOULD. I think that a sequencer program is required to call up the program changes from Key Rig since I don't see a SMF player included. Unless someone who already knows can answer that, I'll volunteer to find out.

Edit: I found this additional market blurb from M-Audio about Key Rig:

"The GM-4 General MIDI Module delivers 128 GM instruments plus a great GM drum kit. It instantly plays GM-compatible standard MIDI files from host applications and provides an extremely easy way of sequencing additional backing tracks."

[This message has been edited by Esh (edited 11-09-2005).]

I have been using Key Rig for a few weeks now..
One of the things I like about the M-Audio program..it allows me to run all 4 modules at the same time, substituting a sound from the GM module with a sound from the Piano module, a organ from the organ module and a synth patch from the synrh module..to any channel within the GM module..
I have been able to play the other modules from a keyboard , but not the GM module sounds[yet]..I will check it out further on this issue..
Although the drum kit is nice ,I would have liked options for kits like the TR808 etc.

Overall I still like HyperCanvas better, but still would recommend KeyRig..

It is my guess that for things to work properly with large high quality samples all the GM instruments need to have the attack (first part of the sample) parts loaded into RAM. Once this is the case Kontakt or Bandstand could immediately respond to program changes. With Bandstand being something like 2GB in total it should be possible. It would still take about 30 seconds to get the rig loaded at startup.

Another workaround could be to load up only those instruments that you know you will use, e.g., all the acoustic instruments but none of the others like special effects/pads and so on. This means you need to get into the wavetable and create a new one. This can be done with Colossus and kontakt....I haven't tried this to see if it works.

The answer is blowing in the wind.

You can indeed play the GM module in KeyRig..

Fran: can you play SMF's using the GM module in Key Rig? Or have you tried something like OMB with it? If so, how did you "wire" it up and how does it sound?

I ordered Key Rig today, just for fun. It's a bargain considering how much something like B4 alone costs.

Jim in the GM mode I can play SMF's. JammerLive[arranger], and realtime from the keyboard.
All four modes can run at the same time, without too much CPU usage.

I use Forte as my host. Also MidiYoke connections..

[This message has been edited by Fran Carango (edited 11-09-2005).]

Hi Fran,
so it does accept program changes in GM mode??

best wishes
rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fran Carango:
[B]