Frank,AJ,Rikki and others..
Give me your views on sampling[do everything software],sequencing, recording[audio] programs with asio, vst, dx support, such as Halion Reason, Kontact etc.
I want a single do all program that will allow me to insert my own choice of sounds in a GM map, without limitations..
The program will have to work in a live performance environment.
If possible easy on the CPU..

I need your Pros and cons.

What is your gut feeling on the new to be Bandstand software?

Fran, I will start off with some overall concepts and approaches.

As you know I have adopted the approach that the Auto accompaniment utilizes lower quality sounds or instruments due to the need for the Wavetable to be GM/GS/XG compatible and accept program changes. I have used a highly modified version of sYnerGi GS together with LiveSynth Pro (other synths will work). There are at this point no very high quality GM wavetables which will accept program changes suitable for live performance needs.

For my lead or melody voices I use top of the line samples or virtual instruments, e.g., Bardstown's Bosendorfer, Garritan Strings and so on. I use these with a top of the line Sampler (Kontakt).

For my vocal harmonizers, I use DecaBuddy or Antares (industry standard).

Finally, I recommend the use of at least moderate quality effects, eg., those found in Sonar 4, etc.

To make it all work, I tie it together as a system with forte Ensemble. This host software is designed to work well in live performance situations. You could use other hosts such as Sonar, Cubase, etc. I find forte more reliable and efficient.

A system such as this can easily exceed the quality and effectiveness of any hardware based system and will do so for years to come. It sounds fantastic and is reliable....plus the price is reasonable. You can spend more and do even better. The good news is that you can start almost anywhere and slowly upgrade to suit your budget and your needs. Furthermore, the system is flexible, you can go into small details and change elements of one voice to changing out and adding new voices.....to changing the whole wavetable.

NI's Bandstand promises to be a good wavetable. Given NI's past track record ...it should be of good quality. Even so...if it isn't, just change the things you don't like and you are away to the races. This needs to be checked to see if NI lets you get into their wavetable and change out voices.

So you can go smaller (lower quality) sounds and effects for live performances to speed up the loading process and higher quality sounds and effects for studio work. You can do all this with the same system. If you must have SAVs then the world is your oyster, e.g., RealGuitar, NI B4 II, NI Guitar Rig, NI Akoustic Pianos, Analog Synths, Samples with Keyswitching (voilins with up and down bow, etc.) and so on and on. It is not to difficult to exceed the quality of today's top of the line arranger keyboards. To all of this there remains one problem...nobody can come up with a good virtual pedal steel for country music. Who would have thought?

Alternatively you can also use a combination of hardware and software, e.g., Workstation with Arranger Software, Arranger with software samplers for high quality lead voices, etc.

As I always say....the proof is in the pudding. I believe serious composers and screen writers (and more and more live performers) will continue to use software based systems. Those with massive budgets will always use real musicians with real instruments.

Fran just give up on your G1000 and your friends and start a new life with just software and a dumb controller keyboard. Make the system look impossible to your customers. Make your customers say to you....this little bit makes all these beautiful noises.....it just can't be can it??? Fran you can't lose....our newest minimalist.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 11-02-2005).]

Frank,
If I am not asking much, would it be possible for you to present us with an audio clip(s) of your setup? maybe a song you like or a midi file that triggers the appropriate sounds?
Theodore

We are about a week away from seeing if NI's Bandstand is the do-all GM program we've been wanting. There's several programs that can play GM SMF's, like Colossus and Reason (with the Omnisounds GM soundset) but none of them accept GM patch changes so they aren't quite ready for stage use without going to a lot of trouble. There's also soundfonts like AJ uses, but the holy grail is to find a great sample-based GM-compatible program and Bandstand has that potential, on paper anyway. Bandstand will be released November 7th.

BTW: I have to say that not all of Native Instrument's products are perfected - I've been hearing from some people who are very unhappy with NI's Akoustic Piano program so we can't take anything on faith.

Hi All
The GM is a Midi Standard that allows different instruments to work together with common voices, i.e.: No 1 is always a Piano etc, how the manufactures implement it is up to them.
Wavetable is just one type of synthesis, and is not used by all instruments; in fact if there was enough memory and hard disk space, the GM voices could all be Giga Samples if the manufacture so chose.
The main reason most of the GM sounds are rough, is because manufactures know that people will change them as soon as the General Midi file is loaded, to suit there own instruments, so consequently they spend little money on them

Bill

Esh, even if NI's Bandstand is only somewhat better than my modified sYnerGi GS Soundfont wavetable ... it will be worth it. In a case like this I will still keep using the top of the line instruments with kontakt for my lead or melody voices and Bandstand for the auto accompaniment.

And yes there are complaints about NI's software including kontakt. I use it with few problems if any. Keep in mind I use my music computer only for music...no internet, no editing, no testing, etc. All testing and editing is done on my general purpose computer and then transferred over to the music computer. Plus I use quality components (sound cards, video cards, HDs, and so on).

As always, for those who wish to hear the quality of the instruments I use go to the various sound developers web sites. They have professional highly qualified people doing their demos. If I provided a sound clip you would throw up your hands and say .... well that is worst thing I have ever heard.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 11-02-2005).]

Esh, here is a response from EastWest concerning program changes with Colossus:

'The Receptor/Colossus bundle was going to be Colossus Live, we just haven't formally named it as such - but it's the same package (and the deal ends November 15).

No, you can't do real-time program changes as the samples are big and need to be loaded - they load pretty quick though.

I hope that helps.

- Doug'

Frank: yeah, I knew from using Colossus myself about how much time it takes to load samples (not terribly long but not convenient for stage), and I knew about the Receptor package too. What Colossus actually does is load only the initial attack samples of the selected sound and then it streams the rest of the sound from the hard drive in real time, but even those attack transients take a lot of RAM and time to load. Colossus uses a modified NI Kontact engine as it's interface so there's a direct connection between Colossus and Bandstand. My gut feeling is that Bandstand likely is a baby-Colossus and uses the same Kontact-based attack transient/disk-streaming technology, but since Bandstand's soundbanks are a fraction of the size of Colossus then it should allow realtime program changes... in theory anyway.

I really didn't feel yet like investing in a Muse Receptor and Colossus is overkill for live use (excellent for studio use though - it has an unbelievably low noise floor and my recordings with it have been incredibly clean), so Bandstand looks like the perfect balance between sample size and loading time. I can't wait to try it... I just maxed out my laptop's RAM at 2 GB so we're both ready to go!

Hi Fran,
I'm only a nutty hobbyist with more money than talent ( which is a worry, ) haa haa.

Suppose it doesn't stop me from asking some questions , though, which may help some of the pro's guide you.

Are you actually planning on switching to a softsynth / software realtime arranger set up for stage work ie omb/softsynth/controller
or is the setup you're requiring more for studio work
ie you sequence your songs in your studio using a softsynth/sequencer to create midifiles, which you then use on stage for backing.


If I remember correctly your were using Hypercanvas , which to my mind, is probably nowhere near the quality of the other softsynths you mentioned.
I even prefer my soundfonts to my Hypercanvas, though I must admit I'm looking forward to Frank's assesment of Bandstand.

I don't require an expensive softsynth
( like Frank ) for playing melody as I play piano , so I use my Clavinova for melody. If I sang, I wouldn't even need that.

It would be great to have a good quality softsynth for the backing instruments/styles ( like bandstand) , even though I'm quite happy with soundfonts at the moment.

There's some really amazing software around. Sequencers like Sonar. Programs like Fruity Loops, etc
best wishes
Rikki

For me the ultimate system will be an arranger keyboard / software combination. It is hard to beat the control surface of an arranger keyboard for style selection and playing. If the new NI software accepts program changes, then the only issue left would be to make the arranger keyboard to send out program changes for each part of a style. It will be interesting to try this and compare the sound quality, sample load time, etc.