The end of hardware sound modules...

[Cheez]

We all know with more and more VSTi and Dxi etc plug-ins, the market for sound modules are slowly declining, especially since we can now easily integrate these plug-ins into our software sequencers. With the new Native Instruments Kontakt engine, more and more sample developers are moving towards plug-ins and standalone solutions.



Now, check this one out. For those already using GigaStudio, you may already know about the Garritan Orchestral Strings Library. Garritan has now come up with a new package called Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO). It uses the Kontakt engine, which means it can be used as a plug-in or standalone sampler in PC or Mac OS. It contains all the instruments you need in writing orchestral music (including some pretty good articulations like strings up and down bowings, legato woodwinds etc). It sounds better than any hardward samplers/ modules in the market (even beat many high-priced samples) - check out the demos. It includes reverb. It is packaged with Cubase VST. It only cost USD 249 (4 CD-ROMS)! It can be used on a single laptop since it is RAM based (just make sure you have enough RAM). Looks like the life-span of hardware modules is narrowing...



Link: http://www.garritan.com/GPO.html

 

[lowjk]

- We all know with more and more VSTi and Dxi etc plug-ins, the market for sound modules are slowly declining



This I agree.

But I still prefer hardware. No doubt there´s some good stuff out there but to my ears hardware still sounds better.



The hybrid are pretty good too. I use a Pulsar based system and the Minimoog emulation from the Pulsar is miles better than the Sternberg´s Model-E. Likewise for the the Prophet Emulation vs the NI Pro-5 VSTi.



But there´s no comparison wrt to samplers. I prefer a VSTi sampler anyday. More Ram, streaming from harddisk, on-screen editor, ablility to read AKAI discs.



Ultimately, it´s up to us to capitalise on their strengths but I sure hope that hardware synths won´t die.

 

[Cheez]

Pulsar... I´ve been eyeing it for a while but decided against it in the end as I write mainly orchestral music and dare not venture into the unknown (maybe one day). Out of curiosity, which Pulsar are you using?



Hardware modules for electronic music is definitely still superior to software plug-ins, in my opinion. There´s something in the hard-wiring that produces the unique sound. No way any software can completely reproduce, for eg, the original analog moog. Btw, Creamware stuffs are still software though. Have you tried the Moog Modular V from Arturia? But then if you have the Modular III from Creamware, you won´t need anything else. If people like Hans Zimmer uses it, then there must be something in it...



While hardwares for electronic music is still the way to go, I think it is dying for orchestral music. Glad I sold my Roland JV 1080 years ago and changed to GigaStudio. When the XV came out, I half wondered if hardware orchestral sound would revive. But now, I have no more doubt it wouldn´t. The gap is just too wide and getting wider.

 

[lowjk]

> Pulsar... I´ve been eyeing it for a while but decided against it in the end as I write mainly orchestral music and dare not venture into the unknown (maybe one day). Out of curiosity, which Pulsar are you using?



If you are doing purely orchestral music, there´s nothing in it for you in the Puslars. Save the money and spend on the Giga sound libraries.



I bought my Pulsar II for the Juno 106 and Minimoog and Prophet One emulations.



No wonder you gave up on your modules. Next to the real thing, a nice well recorded sample is what you need for an orchestral arrangement. Not even the mighty Triton and XVs have the capacity to stream long samples like Giga Studio.

 

[Cheez]

Here is the final straw. The expensive East West Symphonic Orchestra (runs on the NI Kontakt engine) has dropped their price and released a Silver edition that cost USD 295. (http://www.soundsonline.com/sophtml/details.phtml?sku=EW-161). For those writing orchestral music, there should now be no more argument whether to use hardware or software.

 

[koala]

crack... crack... crack...

guys,

crack... crack... crack...

this is what I get from my computer when I try to use VSampler or Kontakt with some heavy sound libraries...

maybe, since you seem to be well accustomed to using soft synthesiser, you could tell me what goes wrong... latency, as far as i understand... but should I upgrade: RAM, HD, CPU, sound card... I am seriously confused...

Thanks in advance,
Vincent

 

[Cheez]

What are the specs of your PC (or Mac)? What soundcard are you using? Which sequencer?

Kontakt isn't the best softsampler around - lots of bugs still. They are sorting their bugs slowly. Have you downloaded the lastest version (1.5.2)? There are lots of possibility for latency problems. If you use DFD, then make sure your harddrive has good seek time (preferably 8ms or less). Always use at least 2 hard-drives - one dedicated for your samples. Lots of RAM is good. And don't use soundcards meant for gamers. Lastly, always better for your PC to be dedicated for music than using it for surfing the net, playing games, wordprocessing etc.

Don't know much about Vsampler. Maybe if you tell us more about your PC setup, we'll be able to give you more help.

 

[lowjk]

Re: crack... crack... crack...

guys,

crack... crack... crack...

this is what I get from my computer when I try to use VSampler or Kontakt with some heavy sound libraries...

maybe, since you seem to be well accustomed to using soft synthesiser, you could tell me what goes wrong... latency, as far as i understand... but should I upgrade: RAM, HD, CPU, sound card... I am seriously confused...

Thanks in advance,
Vincent

Cheez has given some good advice.
If you are serious about your work, I would also suggest that you dedicate a computer or laptop for DAW (ie no word processor, games) and inactivate any antivirus program before you start recording.

 

[Cheez]

If you really cannot afford to get another computer dedicated for music, the next best option is to dual boot your PC - one dedicated for music and the other for your other stuffs. Softwares like Partition Magic will do it for you easily.

 

[lowjk]

If you really cannot afford to get another computer dedicated for music, the next best option is to dual boot your PC - one dedicated for music and the other for your other stuffs. Softwares like Partition Magic will do it for you easily.

Agree.

But truth be told; a reasonable DAW machine with a decent sound card (no Sound Blaster/Audigy please!) can be had for a reasonable price.
Just get a P4 2.4 or XP1800 and above, coupled with a mother board with onboard graphics card (you don't need fancy ATI or Nvidia Card for DAW unless you want Dual Video output). Get a 80GB harddisk with 512MB or more of RAM and you're set.

If you can't afford it, there are some good shareware or even freeware programs.

I believe it can be done for about $2.5K. I still remember the days when a Yamaha sequencer with a 5.25" drive cost almost $4k and it does not even record any audio data. I could not afford that and bought a Korg SQD-1 with a dinky 2.8" drive. The disks are next to impossible to get these days. And all it has are 3-4 digit LEDs to do your sequencing on.

 

[koala]

my harware... your remarks...

guys,

I think yoou are 100% correct... I recognize my-self in all the things you said I should not do... but the context was not given...

I am not musician... my lovely wife is... and she is good but has not a full computer knowledge... that is where I come in... I play the big computer guru... with more or less success as you understood...

I converted one of my desktop platform to become a music desktop... inserted a SoundBlaster Live 5.1 for the sound and tried to understand the difference in-between sampler and modules, sequencer and sampler, midi and audio, audio and loops...
Ok, I am not an expert yet, but I have a full understanding of what I believe would be great for her to play with:
- keyboards (she has them already), connected to computer by midi for composing and audio for sound capture
- module (she has one too), connected to computer out and audio for sound capture
- software sampler, used more like a sound module, nothing like Absynth or fancy modulation things, just soft synth sounds
- software sequencer, for linking all this and concretely going to composing and creating a demo

So what I have identified is:
Windows, Sonar, Kompakt or Kontakt, VSampler, midi in, midi out, audio in and audio out... I realize that my present platform is not the proper one, but before jumping to buying, I try to understand what goes really wrong on this one... and my nightmare is the Crack... Crack when I use soft synth products like Kontakt or VSampler...

At this stage my knowledge drives me to believe:
- the sound card is bad and my main problem is latency, but also,
- the pc need 1 GB of RAM
- there should be two hard drives, 7200 rpm or SCSI
- there should be an external audio 6x6 box
- there should be an external midi 4x4 box

I was just wondering if you have faced other problem generating the crack... crack events...

Thanks in anycase, I really appreciate your input.

 

[lowjk]

Re: my harware... your remarks...

So what I have identified is:
Windows, Sonar, Kompakt or Kontakt, VSampler, midi in, midi out, audio in and audio out... I realize that my present platform is not the proper one, but before jumping to buying, I try to understand what goes really wrong on this one... and my nightmare is the Crack... Crack when I use soft synth products like Kontakt or VSampler...

At this stage my knowledge drives me to believe:
- the sound card is bad and my main problem is latency, but also,
- the pc need 1 GB of RAM
- there should be two hard drives, 7200 rpm or SCSI
- there should be an external audio 6x6 box
- there should be an external midi 4x4 box

I was just wondering if you have faced other problem generating the crack... crack events...

Thanks in anycase, I really appreciate your input.

Hi Koala,

When you type "Crack", I hope you mean crackle and not a software crack to run pirated programs.

In any case, my first advice to you is ditch the SB Live card. Get a true semiprofessional soundcard. The SB Live does not have proper ASIO drivers and will result in crackles because the driver is not set up to cope with low latencies. (but you could try the APSLive drivers though).

Here's the link
http://come.to/sblive

(ps - these are non-official drivers written by enthusiasts; no guarantee can be made whether they will run in your system or not. The APSLive worked for me but you can't play some games with it; refer to my earlier advice on not installing games on a DAW machine. The KX drivers would not work on my system).

 

[Cheez]

Koala,

I agree with Lowjk. The soundcard is the most likely culprit. Are you using DFD (direct from disk streaming) function in Kontakt? If so and that gives you crackles, then the hard drive is the next most likely bottle-neck. No need to get SCSI unless you're willing to spend money. Western Digital SATA drives now comes with 10000rpm (but rather noisy). But if you're not using huge samples, a second 7200rpm IDE drive with low seek time should suffice (Seagate is pretty good).

Are you using Windows XP or 98/ME? Windows 98/ME has a RAM limit of 512MB - I have some tricks of changing the registry to increase that to 1MB. What are the specs of your PC?

 

[veganbleu]

hey there koala, here are some drivers that you might want to use for the sblive.

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1 kx drivers

I haven't tried this myself so caveat emptor. the down side, so i've heard, is that creative drivers themselves are usually a chore to deinstall. Which might cause you to have no sound as they clash with the kx drivers. Some form of reinstall is in order in that case.

The plus side is that the latency can drop to 5ms and the drivers offer unprecedented control over the midi/sound routing.

 

[koala]

sound card and hard disk...

your input is really great and helps a lot.

clear for me now:
- sound card latency is issue number one to be addressed first by trying other drivers, second changing to more higher range card
- hard drive speed is issue number two to be addressed for sampler sound volumes
- RAM is not a bad idea to increase but may not really affect the existing environment

Ok, great.
The next step I need is about Soundfonts...
What are the pros and cons of using Soundfonts?

My view, is that I don't understand why all cards are not implementing this, it seems to be the best way to get sounds and avoid latency and hard disk problems. It moves the sound responsibility to the sound card and avoids to overload the system... is there anything better? it would be like having a sampler that you can load at runtime level with standard sounds for playing... sounds so great on paper... what is practically not working for the market not to validate this as a standard?

Thanks in advance

 

[lowjk]

Re: sound card and hard disk...

your input is really great and helps a lot.

- What are the pros and cons of using Soundfonts?

My view, is that I don't understand why all cards are not implementing this, it seems to be the best way to get sounds and avoid latency and hard disk problems. It moves the sound responsibility to the sound card and avoids to overload the system... is there anything better? it would be like having a sampler that you can load at runtime level with standard sounds for playing... sounds so great on paper... what is practically not working for the market not to validate this as a standard?

Thanks in advance

Soundfonts.
Pros - can find soundfonts on the net. Even commercial soundfonts CD-ROMs are cheaper than the AKAI, EMU & Roland Counterparts.

Cons - associated with Soundblaster. May not have the high fidelity that pros need (you can find 24/96 libraries for HALION). I haven't seen this sample rate for soundfonts.

Pro cards are designed for sound quality and low latencies. All the "horse power" on the card are used for these. No spare DSP for "powering" soundfonts.

If you are interested in using soundfonts with a semi-pro level card, you can look at the EMU range of soundcards (gasp, a Creative Lab company).

www.emu.com

 

[veganbleu]

cheez:

was very surprised at the quality of the sounds from the demo page of the garritan personal orchestra. I've read that kontakt has a number of problems in some test machines that were used by the reviewers though. And wow, you compose symphonic pieces? Any chance of hearing one?

koala:

Soundfonts are considered to be poor man's samples. And i think only soundcards with built in soundfont support can use them, if not an external soundfont player is needed, which kind of defeats the purpose. Most of the card makers will inherently not support soundfonts natively since it's actually a competitor's standard.

If cost is an issue than yes updating drivers are the most cost effective. But inherently the sblive has high noise floor for recording and so maybe a new card would be a good investment.

 

[Cheez]

was very surprised at the quality of the sounds from the demo page of the garritan personal orchestra. I've read that kontakt has a number of problems in some test machines that were used by the reviewers though. And wow, you compose symphonic pieces? Any chance of hearing one?

Kontakt has some problems. Native Instruments seem to be trying hard to resolve the issue. Too bad tha GPO is on Kontakt format. But with that price, who can complain? I think the majority of the issue is with Mac OS X. I haven't tried Kontakt, so I can't comment too much. I would like to get hold of their Reaktor 4 and Absynth 2, though.

My pieces... sorry but no website to host them, unfortunately. Don't want to spend the money and time to set one up. If SOFT is willing to set up something like that for us music writers, then maybe....

 

[Cheez]

Re: sound card and hard disk...

My view, is that I don't understand why all cards are not implementing this, it seems to be the best way to get sounds and avoid latency and hard disk problems. It moves the sound responsibility to the sound card and avoids to overload the system... is there anything better? it would be like having a sampler that you can load at runtime level with standard sounds for playing... sounds so great on paper... what is practically not working for the market not to validate this as a standard?

There are lots of free soundfonts out there but few are good enough to be usable - at least to my ears. The better soundfonts are those that you purchase (eg from Sonic Implants) - but then the better it sound, the larger the size. The Creative soundcards can't handle it if the file size is too large either. Better off with other softsamplers.

Of course, if you really want some soundfonts to be used in other samplers, you can always convert it into another format by using software like Chicken Translator. I've converted the best sounding soundfonts I can find into Giga format but in the end, those files are just taking up my hard drive space - their quality is too bad to be used.

 

[soft]

Okie... drum roll......

Presenting! CHEEZ'S Symphony No.10 (quick, send me the file and I will put it up.)

was very surprised at the quality of the sounds from the demo page of the garritan personal orchestra. I've read that kontakt has a number of problems in some test machines that were used by the reviewers though. And wow, you compose symphonic pieces? Any chance of hearing one?

Kontakt has some problems. Native Instruments seem to be trying hard to resolve the issue. Too bad tha GPO is on Kontakt format. But with that price, who can complain? I think the majority of the issue is with Mac OS X. I haven't tried Kontakt, so I can't comment too much. I would like to get hold of their Reaktor 4 and Absynth 2, though.

My pieces... sorry but no website to host them, unfortunately. Don't want to spend the money and time to set one up. If SOFT is willing to set up something like that for us music writers, then maybe....