I had been interested in Bandstand as a possible sound module for my computer arranger "One Man Band".

I recently got a chance to try it out when I helped one of my musician friends set up Bandstand in his computer. We used it from inside of Sonar as a DXi, but it also works as a standalone, vst or an RTAS ( Pro Tools ) plug in.

I also brought along my copy of the freeware SGM180 soundfont and installed it into his comp to get an A/B demo feel. We used The Freeware Van Basco Karaoke player to trigger the midifiles used with SGM180.

He doesn't have OMB or a hardware arranger, but he does have Band in a Box so we A/B'd both modules with that as well. Because it takes a bit of time to load up instruments, BIAB did not work well at all with Bandstand. For quite a few of the BIAB styles, the basic midi parameters and sometimes the instruments themselves change when going from Variation A to B, and Bandstand simply couldn't keep up. It does not appear that it would be a practical solution for me with OMB.

Bandstand worked ok with the midifiles we used, but you cannot go "instantly" from one song to the next. OTOH, SGM180 loaded up instruments quickly and efficently. CPU drain was pretty close to equal ( a mild surprise there, thought the soundfont would be more efficient ), but his computer was more than adequate for either.


As far as actual sounds, it was a tossup. Another surprise, since Bandstand uses approx 10 times the amount of sampling memory that SGM180 uses. He and I were in pretty close agreement about the sounds btw. We particularly liked the AC pianos, acoustic & clean electric guitars, and organs better on Bandstand. The drums were a tossup, as well as the electric basses, reed and horn sounds. We didn't much care for the majority of the analog synth sounds on either ( no surprise there ).

Surprisingly, we liked the strings, overdrive / disto guitars, acousic bass, and electric pianos / clavs better on SGM180.

After this test, I'm determined to continue modifying the SGM180 to the point that all of the instruments I don't care for on it are replaced. While Bandstand is a very smoothe app with a really cool interface, I dont think it would work for me. I like the interface enough that if it would load up the instruments faster, I would consider replacing some of the internal samples in it with ones I like better. I would simply replace some of the existing samples being careful to rename the new ones exactly as they are named inside of the app's folder.

AJ


[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 01-15-2006).]