Vquestor, I might not be understanding you correctly but sYnerGiGS plays GS, GM and XG midi files and styles as well as any other software wavetable available today. I have contacted Darrell Marjoram on when he plans to complete the full XG wavetable. He has given no indication, however, 23% of people frequenting his site and voting are in favour of this as his next project. It is the highest on his list.

The problem is more in the other direction, i.e., using other Wavetables (Hyper Canvas) to play Yamaha styles or midi files. Yes you can take and transfer the sYnerGiGS drums to other soundfont wavetables using Alive and you are in business with different sounding wavetable. I have done that with the following:

Ntonyx
Akai
Fluid
GeneVoice
JurgenGM
MerlinGM
Personal Copy
Sonic Implants
Sound Canvas (soundfont version)
SonicReality
Utopia
Xiod

What do I use? Well, sYnerGiGS modified with better accoustic instruments, e.g., pianos, strings, guitars, brass, etc.

Now Vquestor if you mean someone should attempt to sample Yamaha's keyboards - well some of its being done but it is not so easy. The following is an example:
http://www22.brinkster.com/guraydere/

Sampling is an art and science unto itself and would not want to attempt this in the twilight of life - how sad!!! Given that most of todays top of the line keyboards have at best medicore to moderate quality acoustic instruments sounds, you would be into looping, layering, LFOs, etc. to make them sound acceptable. This is to hard for an old man. This is, of course, true for drums as well.

You could as you have suggested use the sYnerGiGS Drums/LiveSynth Pro with other wavetables, e.g., Hyper Canvas (drums turned off). The sYnerGiGS Drums are of moderate quality - not quite as good as some others.

Now for the Live - Styler crashes I have no answers other than not giving up to soon. I had them initially but eventually did the right things on my system for it to work properly. Mine was more to do with midi port/channel assignments. Have you tried the factory reset? Did you do a full install? Sometimes some of the initializing files are missing or corrupt.

WOW, Frank, I had NO idea that you had
already done XG drum wavetables with so
many soundfonts!
It is also very good news that SynerGIGs is working on a full XG soundfont.

No,I was not implying sampling Yamaha keyboards from scratch, but instead,just using quality sounds that play properly to the Yamaha protocol.
Since you want the highest quality sounds and quality samples already exist,it's just a matter of converting instrument banks with the proper note mapping(I know it's a lot of work). Using BANKS is the key, although I'm sure you will still have to juggle instruments for proper drum mapping. There is also a great program(you probably already know of) called AWAVE for bank and sample conversion,which may be of help to you.
I have never heard of a "Soundfont edition of Sound Canvas".
Roland has some of the best drumkits I've
ever heard - have you found any that you feel are better?

I will try the factory reset for Live-Styler,
and if that doesn't work, I'll do a complete
deinstall/reinstall.

Thanks for the help.

Vquestor, just so we understand each other, I just removed the drumkits from these Wavetables and replaced them with the ones frum sYnerGiGS. It gave me a new sound when using my accompaniment.

The drumkits for sYnerGiGs are pretty good but not as good as the ones used by the screen writers and serious composers, e.g., DrumKit From Hell, etc.

There are all kinds of people converting keyboard/soundcard sounds to soundfont. You can find some Roland Canvas versions on this site:
http://www.hammersound.net/

Yes, I use a number of sample conversion programs, e.g., Awave, CDXtract, etc. Kontakt and VSampler can also do some conversions reasonably well. I have this comfortable feeling that my computer is well stocked with music programs. I am a lucky old man who can fiddle away his remaining time with no trouble at all. There are not enough hours in a day!!!


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 11-13-2003).]

Frank, you are a very lucky man (old or
otherwise)indeed!
I'm sure your ever-improving FLR soundfont
must sound incredible. I hope you can
post a sample MP3 of a song using it sometime.
Keep up the great work.

I'm also very impressed with your project Frank, and as Vquestor just said, it would be great if you could post some MP3 samples. It's always interesting to listen to other systems, and you have teased us for such a long time with your descriptions. So pleeeease, give us some samples of what your system is good for.

Vquestor & MonSound thanks very much for your kind comments. I am not trying to tease you with the excellent sound of my system. In fact, it is the software & sound developers who deserve all the credit. I am very reluctant to show how poorly I can play and therefore do not post any of it. However, you can always get an approximate idea of what the system sounds like by going to some of the developers sites:
http://www.samplebanks.com/ http://www.bardstownaudio.com/frames/home.html http://www.artvista.net/index.html http://www.garritan.com/ http://www.gigasamplers.com/gigasamplerpercussion.htm http://www.kirkhunterstudios.com/ http://www.scarbee.com/ http://www.projectsam.com/ http://vrsound.com/ http://www.swgames.com/westgate/

I have purchased many of these and other (QL Brass, Whole Lotta Country, Sonic Implants B3, etc.) sounds for use in my lead/melody voices utilizing Kontakt. You could check them out at their sites. These instruments, of course, sound a great deal better in real time - but it gives you an idea. There are other even higher quality sampled acoustic instruments (VSL and EW/QL Symphonic Orchestra) but at a much higher price (approx $3000 US).

With rare exceptions, I only use Soundfonts for my accompaniment. If it weren't for the drums, I would probably abandon Soundfonts altogether. There seems to be very little innovation happening with Soundfonts. That is not to say that there are not some very good quality Soundfonts around. The good news is most of them are free. Even I will use them occasionally to mess-up a pristine clinically clean Tenor Sax to make it bite, growl, smoke, out-of-tune and so on. If you play the blues you gotta do it!!!

The plus in the approach I have been advocating is that you can build your own system that meets your needs and your budget. Further, I maintain that at less than the cost of todays top of the line keyboards you can vastly improve your sound quality. The cost is - a slightly lower quality control surface - but it is worth it!!!


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 11-14-2003).]

Does anyone know if it is possible in live styler to press any fill button and then have the arranger go back to the variation it was playing before?
This is how it is on my Ketron X4 (without the jump feature enabled)
ex. variation B is playing.
I press fill A, fill A plays, then variation B plays again without having to press variation B.

Jick Duck, I know of no way. You could put a request in to N. Stellberg. He is pretty good at implementing features.

Or if your timing is good you could press the fill and then the appropriate variation. This would take some practice!!!!

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 11-14-2003).]