Midi Sounds

[dhj]

Hope somebody can help with this as I am struggling to understand !
I have a Soundblaster Audigy soundcard in a 2mhz pc running XP home connected to my hi-fi (150w JVC). I currently use N-Tracks and Band in a Box to play back midi backing tracks to record (guitar) and sing over. When playing back these efforts, although the wav bits are ok, the midi parts sound pants due (I understand) to the feeble soundcard GM bank. So, I am looking to get a better overall sound and this is where I get very confused. Some people recommend a better card some say soundfonts (I have tried some of these and some are ok, others not so good) and some people have recommended that I use a software synth. A quick trawl via google has revealed thousands of synths and I have absolutely no idea what I am supposed to be looking for. Alll I am trying to achieve is a "better, warmer, more realistic" sound when I play back a midi file. Can somebody please enlighten me ?

Many thanks

 

[tedluk]

First of all, welcome to the board!

Well, everyone is right! The Soundblaster is not a very good card for anything audio. The GM wavetable synth sounds terrible. Soundfonts are a viable option, but you'll need to find ones that sound good. Softsynths (plug-ins or stand alone) offer you a very broad palette to work with. If you are trying to get "more realistic" sounds, then, since you didn't say it specifically, I'll assume you're trying to reproduce actual instruments like horns and piano and strings, as opposed to creating new sounds. If that's the case, you should be looking at samplers, but there are lots of choices. Of the softsynths you've seen, most should have descriptions and many will probably have audio samples of their sounds.

Having lots of choices, while daunting at first, is a good thing in the long run.

If you haven't been HERE, go! This is probably the best source on the net for plugs of every variety.

Good luck!

Ted

 

[manning1]

dhj. what you can try as well is to rent a number of different external midi
sound modules. a lot of biab users have many different midi sound modules for thousands of palettes of sounds. the best thing is to try some and see which you like the best at a music dealer. depending how far you want to go and your budget you can get a cornucopia of amazing sounds from external
midi sound modules, and this saves processing load on your pc which can be significant running soft synths.

 

[dhj]

Ted,
Many thanks for the welcome (and the advice). Followed the link and was met with a list of 734 vst instruments with "Synth (Analogue / Subtractive)", "Semi-Modular Synth", "Synth (FM)" and so on. Have absolutley no idea what I am supposed to be looking for. If I select one say, Audiose Anenome, and load it into n-tracks, will it just pick up the midi sounds and play them back ? Sorry to be asking such daft questions but I really am in the dark. Thanks again

 

[tedluk]

I think it's important to clarify what MIDI is and isn't. This is a topic that seems to generate a lot of confusion and comes up frequently.

MIDI is NOT audio. MIDI is NOT sounds. MIDI is a protocol that manufacturers adopted in order to allow different brands of equipment communicate with one another. MIDI describes the parameters of a performance only. I.e. when to start a note, what note it is, how loud to play it, how long it should last, etc. As such, it is incumbent on whatever device you are using to interpret these instructions and use them to produce audio. The device can be a hardware synthesizer (either a keyboard or module) a soft-synth (a device that exists only in software) or anything else that's capable of responding to MIDI input (there are many devices that can respond to MIDI messages that don't produce sound at all).

So, when you look at all those softsynths, all of them can playback via MIDI. You can narrow your search using the filters they offer. I don't know what kinds of sounds you are looking for in particular so I can't give you a more accurate answer. If, as I suspect, you are looking for sounds of "real" instruments, look at samplers and sample playback instruments.

Hope that helps some.

Ted

 

[dhj]

OK - I've spent some time overnight playing with this and I am now able to download, install and hear music from numerous synths via n-tracks. The problem is.......none of it sounds remotely like what I am looking for. For example, I have a midi file with one track allegedly sounding like a jazz guitar. Playing this track through a synth doesn't sound like ANY guitar (jazz or not) and in most cases is some weird and wonderful sound (I painstakingly selected each individual instrument !!). So far, I've tried a number of synths (Crystal, Triangle and so on without success). Does anybody know of a synth which replays standard midi sounds but 'better' or am I still misunderstanding ?

Many thanks again for all your help.

 

[TimOBrien]

http://www.soundfont.com/tutorials.html

 

[dhj]

Tim,
Many thanks for that link. I've downloaded a number of soundfonts - some good and some not so good. I'm still a bit confused though. For example on the Band in a Box site there is a section on comparison of midi using the basic SB card and then using numerous synthesisers and soundfonts. My question is how do you use a synth to play back standard midi sounds and make them sound more 'natural' ? In other words, if I have an instrument (lets say Jazz guitar) in a midi track and I play that through a synthesiser what instrument (or setting) do I select in the synth to produce the sound I am looking for.
Thanks again for your patience everybody

 

[beezelbubba]

I've just started playing around/w virtual instruments in Ntrack!It's very fun!Lots of free ones that sound really nice to me at this site:
http://www.kvraudio.com/