No sampled sax sound can ever sound quite like the Real Thing. Saxes are among the most variable of instruments in their tonal quality and nature even during a single note, and a sample can only capture the particular variation(s) that the original player of the real sax being sampled actually used. Once you have that digitized recording (which is all a sample is, after all), there’s not that much you can do to it (not in real-time, anyway) that would mimic what a real sax player could do.
Oh, you could vary the vibrato depth with your Mod wheel, or set that or a foot pedal or after-touch to control digital subtractive filters to simulate “brightness,” or even cross-fade between multiple samples based on after-touch pressure (perhaps the most realistic thing you can do with samples but still not all that realistic: when a real sax player brightens his tone, he is not cross-fading between a mellow sax sound and a bright one!), etc., but while all of those would give you some expressiveness above and beyond a dry sample playback, none of them would sound quite like what a real sax player does with his lips, tongue, throat, chest, etc.
No, the only way at present to get truly realistic and naturally expressive sax sounds out of an electronic instrument is with physical modelling. The only arranger keyboard that I know of that can do this for sure is Yamaha’s 9000Pro with one of its PLG slots filled with a PLG-150VL card, and also using a Breath Controller or some other means of sending the proper MIDI CCs. I’ve heard that the Technics KN6000 (and presumably 6500) can do something similar by tracking a human voice singing into its microphone, and using that to modulate its brass and reed sounds, but I’ve never heard this in action.
My $15 (not a typo!) YMF724-equipped PCI sound card includes the equivalent of the PLG-150VL (sans ability to program whole new algorithms). I have just uploaded a sample to the Web space I got with my ISP but have never used for anything. It’s a MIDI file that I modified from a demo I downloaded from NTonyX’s web site to not use XG voices past Level 1 (it was designed for the MU100R which is Level 4 XG plus VL and VH, though of course the VH wasn’t used in this piece) that has an absolutely phenomenal, truly expressive tenor jazz sax, and also a really cool but short trumpet part about 2¤3of the way through the song, both of which use VL. The backing music is entirely Level 1 XG wavetable sampled voices, but even they sound better than usual due to full usage of the XG spec including use of MIDI Continuous Controllers (CCs). The MIDI file should theoretically play as-is on a 9000Pro with VL card installed (let me know if it doesn’t work right), as well as on any PC with a YMF7#4-based sound card or the S-YXG100plus 1.0 Soft Synth with SoftPLG-100VL module installed (this only gets installed if you have a real Intel Celeron or Pentium II or ///, not an AMD). I will upload an ASF (Windows Media Audio) version as well so those of you without VL and Level 1 XG (or better) equipment can still hear it the way it’s supposed to be. I fully expect that when you hear the .ASF, you will also want to download the .MIDi file (a much smaller file!) and load it into a sequencer (even if you don’t have the MIDI gear needed to hear it in all its glory), just to prove to yourself that this really is MIDI that you’re hearing (off a $15 PC sound card’s internal MIDI capabilities, no less)! It’s that good!
There are other aspects to this song that demonstrate some other rather interesting technology. For one thing, none of the parts, neither XG samples nor VL, were generated by recording a live human player’s playing. Nor were they manually tweaked with CC control curves in an advanced sequencer such as CakeWalk, nor were the CC values hand-entered in a less-sophisticated MIDI editor (though I did do some hand-tweaking of the setups and a global replace on which MIDI CC was being used in one case, I did not adjust the values themselves). No, every nuance you hear, in VL and in wavetables (listen especially to the bass, drums, and guitars), was generated by NTonyX’s incredible software, especially Style Enhancer, which uses artificial intelligence to add human-like nuances and warmth to dry hand-entered or keyboard-played MIDI tracks! They now have a new, easier-to-use and more automated program called Stylizer. I have long thought that Yamaha should license their technologies for use in the Sytles of a new series of PSRs and Pro-line arranger keyboards (the Motif is a step in the right direction, as is the Korg KARMA, but neither is quite what NTonyX is).
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