elle, good to hear from you.

There is not a very good reason at this point for selecting Kontakt given the recent Halion update. Both are good samplers and Halion may have the edge when recording audio within Cubase SX. There are still some problems with the Kontakt DFD - but this will be fixed - soon. In addition, I intend to use my system more for live performances where this is not an issue.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 06-18-2003).]

Frank,thanks for all the great information!
Wow, I guess the FLR2003 will soon be
road worthy. With your software on a laptop
with perhaps one of the new firewire
interfaces, like the M-audio FIREWIRE 410
or Ego Systems QUATA-FIRE www.esi-pro.com/listProduct.php?ctgr=7
you could take your system anywhere.

I am sorry to hear that even the latest
version of SonarXL (2.2), has such horrible
latency even with ASIO drivers. I had always
gone with Cakewalk in the past, because of
their touted "user-friendly"ness, and
superior editing of midi files.
But,I have always found their latency unacceptable. I guess it's time to look into
Cubase.
Have you tried the standalone soundfont player called "Audio Compositor"? If so,
how does it compare to LiveSynthPro?

Doesn't Yamaha make their own softsynth
like the Roland Hypercanvas? I haven't tried Hypercanvas, but have heard that the Roland HQ-Orchestral is absolutely superb(and expensive).

Idatrod, this eKo thing does look
interesting, but out of my price range.
Nevertheless, it is a big step.

Vquestor, Sonar 2.2 XL is not that bad when it comes to latency but for me I prefer if it were 10ms or less. In addition, I have not figured out how to run live more than one Audio Channel in Sonar. I am certain there is a way. I have always used Cakewalk in the past but have not had Sonar for more than a few weeks. In some ways Cakewalk Plus Bill Gates is a safer business relationship then Steinberg with no one.

I have tried and paid for Audio Compositor. It works but is also limited by latency and quality of the effects. Here I am not entirely certain, but it can only hold a certain number of waves or bits at one time. I could not load sYnerGiGS edit it and save it without error messages. Otherwise it works. LiveSynthPro is better. You can use the effects of the host and use any size of GM Wavetable.

The best hope is SeerSystem's Reality or Roland's HQ Hyper Canvas. It certainly would be nice if VSampler 3.0 or Kontakt came out with a midi program change feature. In fact, I already have a Kontakt GM wavetable by Sonic Reality - ready to go!!!

And yes, Yamaha has their own softsynth and it is very good for its size and playing back midi files but.... It is only 4 or so MB and has latency problems. The quality would be lower then their lowest quality arranger keyboard - not bad but not good enough.

My system with some optimization including your noted suggestions would be ready for live performances. In fact, on other forums a number of live entertainers are doing just that with laptops and good controller keyboards. It is going to happen.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 06-18-2003).]

Yamaha make a couple of soft synths - the S-YXG50 and the S-YXG100. You can get a free download from Yamaha for a 90 day trial. Version 4 of the S-YXG50 offers a 4 Mb set of samples. I have version 3 which has only 2Mb. It only does XG level 1 - 480 voices, but has a TG300B mode (676 voices) which I've never used. It also comes with a midi player. There's not much you can do with it except run it from a sequencer which I do, using XGworks. I have it installed on my laptop and it saves me lugging around a keyboard if I want to check out a sequence. It has a very high latency so isn't really useable with a keyboard, regardless of the speed of the CPU.

Bryan

Gentlemen,
Thank you very much for your responses.

Frank, have you tried (please forgive for suggesting,if you already have) either Xlutop "Chainer" or Dsound "RT Player Pro"
to host "Voicemachine"?
Also, could you please tell me the names of the other forum sites that you mentioned.
I would someday also like to trigger live
percussion sounds from a soundfont player,
so latency is a very big issue for me(<5ms).

It is probably the case, that you have tested every VSTi,DXi,and standalone soundfont player in existence; and the
winner(so far) is "LiveSynthPro" DXi.
Have you tried LiveSynthPro in the
Brainspawn "Forte" host?

Vquestor, I have tried VoiceMachine with FXpansion (Sonar XL), Chainer and Console with no success. I have not tried it with Dsound "RT Player Pro. I will give this a go soon.

I have not tried LiveSynthPro with Brainspawn "Forte" host. I will look into it as well. Furthermore, I am certain I have not tried all the various wrappers out there.

Some of the forums where you will find professional entertainers, screen writers, composers and sound developers are as follows:
http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?id=forum_us
http://www.northernsounds.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi
http://www.tascam.com/forums/index.php

In addition, you can find similar forums under Yahoo, Steinberg, Cakewalk and so on.

I hope this is of help.

Frank, thanks for the info.
What you say about Cakewalk and Microsoft
may be true. But to make matters worse, Steinberg
has been purchased by a company called
Pinnacle that specializes in video software.
Unfortunately, I have purchased some of
Pinnacle's consumer level video editing
and authoring software (Studio7,Studio8,Express), and have consistently been disappointed with problems. I hope their poor track record doesn't
affect Steinberg's (presently)excellent products.

Vquestor, you are exactly right. Steinberg could easily deteriorate!!!

At this point, I favor Cubase SX for live performances. It has better effects, latency and overall quality. In addition, you can run more than one application (VSTi, VoiceMachine, etc.) at the same time. In Cakewalk I have not found a way to run Live - Styler and Kontakt at the same time - Playing live. You can record both which is good enough for audio recording.

The bottomline for me still remains to run all applications as standalone versions. This minimizes dependencies on more than one operating system, e.g., Windows & Cubase SX, etc. Oh well, I am very close to my goal.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Frank L. Rosenthal:
[B]I should have indicated in my previous response that I also spent some time with Roland's HQ Hyper Canvas. It works very well as a VST instrument in Cubase SX. If I could easily convert my Yamaha Styles XG Drums to GM/GM2 compatible drums, I would be away to the races. I could ditch my Audigy Soundcard and use one very high quality soundcard (e.g., RME) for everything instead of the 2 I now use.

Frank, do you know of any program that
can will automatically remap your XG drums
to roland's GS drums after you make a master template?, and then be able to save the
new drum note assignments as part of the style?

Vquestor, there are a few (GNMidi, OMB) that could remap the the XG Drums to GM Drums. It requires knowledge of the the instrument assignments and then creating a re-map of them. Once you have this you can store it in GNMidi for use as many times as you need. You would need to use something like CASMEdit to separate the midi part of the style then using GNMidi to re-map the drums. Once you have this done you would use CASMEdit to combine the midi and CASM parts of the style. We just need someone to come up with this re-map. In addition, the drums in Channel 9 should be combined with the drums in Channel 10 of all the Yamaha styles.

This I think would be the best solution. You now could use any GM Wavetable (VSTi) of your chosing.

Of the other solutions, it seems to me that LiveSynthPro and VSampler sound the best when using the sYnergiGS GM/GS/XG Wavetable. VSampler has some trouble with calling up the correct drumkits, e.g., Standard, Brush and so on. LiveSynthPro has to be used in something like a DXi host or Cakewalk. The best would be to do the above conversions and use something like the HQ Hyper Canvas as a VSTi. This way I could do everything in Cubase (excellent latency) - Vocal Harmonizer, Accompaniment Sounds and Melody/Lead Instruments

The Bismark BS-16 (VSTi) also works but the sound quality is just not as good. Plus the volumes seem to be different, e.g., drums relative to the rest.