trident, I have tested the Hyper Canvas on the Audigy Platinum, Audigy 2ZS Platinum and the professional Steinberg VSL2020 with no noticable noise - even at very high volume levels. The better samples usually do not suffer from such problems.

You should know that if your computer is of the general garden variety and not tweaked for music you may experience higher levels of noise and distortion.

You can use M. Bedesem's programs together with a sequencer such as Cakewalk to set the octave levels of any of the 16 channels in the style. You can also do this in most softsynths or in forte.

To work with softsynths and hosts requires some investment in time to understand how these things work but once you do you will never go back to hardware. I have done this for several years. Also good results will cost money to acquire high quality software (samples, synths, hosts, effects and so on). You get what you pay for.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 12-21-2004).]