Frank,I just saw that there is a new version of the Brainspawn's Forte 1.2 that supports native VST and VSTi.
http://www.brainspawn.com/

oleg7, yes I was one of the beta testers for it. It will also load DXi and DX effects.

I believe in the next day or so version 1.3 with Audio In will be tested. I hope I can get this to work with Vocal Harmonizers.

Thank you

Frank, which model of Forte do you recommend to use, Ensemble or Quartet ? The prices are $99 or $59. I think $99 is actually pretty expensive for a host.

oleg7, quartet might be enough if you use it as follows:

1. Livesynth/Live - Styler - Accompaniment
2. Kontakt - Lead/Melody Voices
3. & 4. For other instances of VSTi or DXi

The effects do not require a separate instance. I assume this will be true in the future for Audio In & Vocal Harmonizers.

You would need the ensemble if you are into using many instances of synths. I will likely get the ensemble even if the quartet looks like it would be enough for my use. Oh well - I always over design!!!

I agree with you it is relatively expensive. It costs the same or more than V-Stack or RT Player Pro but it can do more for live performances, e.g., Scenes - midi/audio setups, etc. It costs very much less than Project5, but Project5 may work better and is supported by a larger company. Finally, there are the low cost/free hosts, e.g., Console, Chainer, etc. which may be good enough for general use.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 09-05-2003).]

Frank,

in his posts Jos Maas argues for the hardware XG synthesizer approach for playing accompaniments.

Are you able to achieve good performance (low latency) with the software-only synthesizers?

Thank you,

Alex

Alex K, I don't want to undermine what Jos is recommending and doing. We need people like him to continue to make software for our use. Also it is risky to assess what Jos' goals are. In reading his tread I get the distinct impression that he is designing systems for use by hobbyist or home users and not the professional (live & studio).

Older Yamaha soundcards use the 4 mb wavetables. While such wavetables are amazing for their size, the sound quality in terms of today's standard is very low. Latency of Yamaha's soft synths and soundcards are generally very high and not useful for live performance. Yamaha's SW1000XG soundcard (ASIO, WDM) may have overcome some of these problems with their recent drivers but in the past the best latency they could get is around 40 to 50 ms - not good enough!!!

Yes, I get excellent latency (2.9 ms) with software synths, heavy duty streaming from the Hard Disk and professional effects. You need to use the better or pro soundcards, good drivers and good soft synths (Kontakt, Halion, LiveSynth Pro, etc.). I know some find this kind of information hard to accept but it is true!!! The sound developers and serious composers use this equipment and software all the time for live and studio work. In fact, you will find that they will often LAN together one sequencer PC with 2 to 6 sampler PCs with no problems with latency or overall quality of sound. These people use the Vienna Symphonic Library and Eastwest Quantum Leap Orchestra ($3000, 68GB):
http://vsl.co.at/index?http://vsl.co.at/news/product_news.htm?cmsqflag=1
http://www.soundsonline.com/sophtml/details.phtml?sku=EW-155

For those who may be interested, Cubase 2.0 has been released.
http://www.steinbergcanada.com/

Sonar 3.0 has been released.
http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/studio.asp

Obsolescence continues, new things happen and my pocket remains on empty!!!

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 09-05-2003).]

Frank,
I hope your beta testing is going well.
I was wondering if the following scheme would
allow playing of yamaha styles with a minimum
of tweaking:

OMB-->MidiYoke-->Forte-->HQ HyperCanvas, and
LiveSynth-->Custom soundfont with all Yamaha
drum kits ONLY.

I was thinking if you used Hypercanvas for
all style sounds except for drums, and
LiveSynth for all the drums (in Yamaha drum map format),then you would no longer have to
remap any style. Is this feasible?

[This message has been edited by Vquestor (edited 09-12-2003).]

Vquestor, you might be on to something here.

Keyboard->OMB->MYoke->forte->Hyper Canvas

OMB->MYoke->forte->LiveSynth (drums)

The problem I see is that you would somehow need to suppress the drum channels going to Hyper Canvas. In LiveSynth you could run only the XG Drums from sYnerGiGS. I am not certain whether OMB lets you use more then 1 output. Some programs like Cakewalk do.

forte is very powerful when it comes to midi and it may well allow you to suppress the channels of your choice going to specific synths. I just don't know this aspect well enough. I will ask the experts.

The beta testing is an up and down game. They just released a fix for some midi issues (stuck notes, etc.). However, some of my styles play out of tune - oh my!!!

I tried installing the RT Player Pro demo and got a message during installation that my time had run out. I will have to get into the registry and remove all reference to RT Player (assuming I can find them all) and try the installation again.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 09-12-2003).]

Good news Frank,
This may be easier than you think.
You can set OMB to output to Midi Yoke NT:1.
Next load Forte with HQ hypercanvas, and click the "Midi Configuration" tab, then
click the "Channels" tab. On the left column
deselect all Midi Yoke channels except #1.
On the right, click the "Disable All" button.
Now you will have to double click on the
to bring up a pull down menu from
which you will select the same midi channel
as the input. Do this for all channels, except for channel 10 which you will leave
as "disable".
You can now load LiveSynth into Forte, and if
you are using your full Synergi SF, you
do the same thing except disable all channels
except for channel 10. Of course, if you
have customized a drums only SF, this is not
necessary.
So, it appears that Forte can control the
Midi channel selection of the loaded plugins,
and so, you only need OMB to use one
MIDI Yoke channel output.
Please let us know if this works well.

[This message has been edited by Vquestor (edited 09-12-2003).]