Alluding to Scott L's post, I also have Audigy on my main pc with z2200's. The sound is almost as good as my Echo on my LT.. Plus the surround sound and good recording quality.

I will bring my laptop to the sz Jam.

Bernie

Hi Bernie

I wouldn't doubt that your Audigy sounds good. However, there has been a class action lawsuit againt Creative Labs. Looks like they "kind of" owe you $62 because of false advertising.
http://www.theinquirer.net/
http://www.audiocardsettlement.com/

Scott Langholff

[This message has been edited by Scott Langholff (edited 03-29-2005).]

To Scott L
Very interesting,but 2.2 states that the settlement is 25% credit on any Creative product up to $62. In my case,I don't depend on the Audigy for recording,and neither would Scott Yee.

Thanks for the heads up
Bernie

I would still take a look at the SW1000XG. One just went for $180 on ebay. And IMNO it kicks the SB Audigy butt. Now if you want some REAL nice sounds go with a SB or any card that supports soundfonts. Then get AnotherGS and add the patch to make it AnotherXG (it's only 32mb) then add the sounds YOU like to it using the E-Mu Librarian, or Vienna. That is what I have done, and I am extremely happy with it. Just a thought.

PS-I us to have the SW1000XG and the Roland SCC1 both in the same system (p3 700, 512) and it was a nice selection of sounds that didn't eat the CPU for lunch.....

have to say forget the swg card..way TOO much latency, though not bad sounds...i've got to say i believe the best sounds for general smf playback come from the roland GS modules, which btw also sound decent in just the gm format as well. XG sounds overall,imho, are thin and not very exciting..if you are into the virtual instruments scott why not look at the Roland VSC from edirol..it comes bundled with things like home studio and such but is available as a standalone, I have a copy here somewhere which i could email you if you like..aprt from that the Creative Audigy 2 Pro has some really good and useabel "soundfonts"..if you want cheap and very good (particularly on realistic instrument sounds lol apart from guitars!!)look on Ebay for either SC 88, SC88 Pro or SC8850 all Roland canvases and most go for peanuts these days, but have full midi specs, efx, etc etc

Okay. I'm trying to get decent stuff myself.

The major problem with Creative cards, is tha,t as far as I know, they STILL don't sup[port midi portmenteau at all like eevery single CS compliant synth (and XG one) is supposed to. this alone makes them unsuitable for serious MIDI.

GS stuff requires a Sound CAnvass. There is no substiutute. there is no decent sound cnavass on a pc card anymrore, so you are stuck with softsynths. YOu want GS midi? get an external unit. PERIOD.

XG the situation isn't much better. On the plus side, XG units have a GS compatible mode when you send a GS resert sysex.

ANyway, the softsynths are your best bet. The famous DS-XG chipset is not very 200/XP friendly. ALso they BOTTCHED some things when they made the chipset! The softsynth, as well as the sw60xg/db50xg gets it right. Play the XG version of CHildren floating around on the net adnd you will see how the hardware synths on those pci chipsets get it WRONG.

I've obtained an XP compatible SY50XG and it is sweet. You aren't gonna fidn anything else.

I really wish someone would make a XG synth with soundfont support. why can't someone manage that concept?

M-audio Audiophile 192

M-audio Audiophile 192 http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile192-main.html

Hi Scott,
I've only got laptops (remember , I'm only home user).
I have an Audigy nx2 usb soundcard which allows me to load soundfonts without having to use ( midi yoke, live synth pro , asio4all & forte.) I can load up to a 140mb soundfont on my 512mb laptop.
Using forte, livesynth pro etc , I can load a font of round about 250mb's.

My new laptop has some sort of defacto audigy card built in, actually from what I can tell it's still the same sigmatel card as in my other dell, but the software gives it some of the same functions as my audigy nx 2 soundcard including loading soundfonts.

I think there's only a couple of soundfonts with xg drum mapping.
anotherxgsoundfont
Provitamin ( is gm, but as far as I can tell, the drums are mapped to xg).

They won't play your midi files back perfectly, as is, but with a bit of editing to the soundfonts ( rather than to the midifiles), you'll have something that could potentially last you for years. You just save them to disk & load them back in to your next computer.

I don't appear to have any latency with audigy, which was an issue with the Yamaha xg softsynth I used to use.

Until such time as Yammie bring out a good option, I'm staying with the soundfonts, the flexibility of the system is amazing.
There's a lot of freebies around & some good commercial ones.

Recently I've managed to find
Korg M1 Soundfount
Triton Orchestral Soundfont
Matrix 6 Soundfonts etc

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Scottyee:
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