Re: MIDI modules: cost/quality/recommendations?

On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:23:23 -0600, Brian Link wrote:

> I was current in electronic music in the early 80s, and have spent my
> time since then with classical, acoustic music. When I last was
> current with electronic music, the DX-7 was teh bomB.
>
> My son (17) has turned out to be a truly amazing composer - and he
> composes most of his stuff in Finale, played back through an old
> SoundBlaster Live sound card.

In what way is is using the SBLive at the moment? Is he using the default
instruments that come with it? If so, the standard GM set is of fair
quality but rather compromised as it has to cram 128 instruments+drums into
2, 4 or 8 megs (depending on what set your card came with). With the
standard drivers, the card can softload up to 32 megs of sound fonts.

Check out sites such as http://www.hammersound.net/
for some free downloads.

In other words, you might be able to dramatically improve the instrument
quality by softloading better soundfonts to the card. For example, the
violin instrument of even the 8meg GM set should be bettered by a dedicated
8meg violin soundfont.

As the Soundblaster Live has the ability to record itself digitally the
quality should be very good and might even, with the right patch set,
exceed that of some pro modules when recorded via a soundcard.

--
***My real address is m/ike at u/nmusic d/ot co dot u/k (removing /s)
http://www.unmusic.co.uk - about me, music, geek sitcom etc.
http://www.unmusic.co.uk/amh-s-faq.html - alt.music.home-studio
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Disc caddy
    ... So far, my take on the quality I've experienced with printers, in order ... On my Radeon card (after ... matter of routine in any PSU - and maybe an over-voltage clamp to shut ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: Emuzed Angel Dual HQ Tuner for MCE 2005?
    ... > The Emuzed Angel Dual TV Tuner is a dual-tuner PCI Card, ... > High quality video processing helps to provide a cleaner, ... > The Emuzed Angel Dual TV Tuner hardware comes with the following software: ... and the wide array of Emuzedproducts offers ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter)
  • Re: Anybodys machine working most of time?
    ... consider the advances in audio components. ... unless Congress resets the date again), the quality will rapidly improve. ... > exclusively on the performance of the tuner card and video card for the ... Better yet (for the UK market) give us a satellite tuner/encoder ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter)
  • Re: Picture quality
    ... You might want to get the latest drivers for your Hauppauge card from http://www.shspvr.com/mce.html. ... I noticed some better picture quality from the latest driver set, ... Just using the graphics side of it because they say the tuner side is not compatible with MCE. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter)
  • Re: Suggestions for a simple but high-quality DAW on a PC or outboard system
    ... You will need a PCMCIA Firewire card for the laptop or a $20 PCI 1394 card ... > quality recording system on one of my PC's. ... > having the pre-amp separate from my experience with Protools MBox. ... I come from the 2" analog world so I know what good ...
    (rec.audio.pro)