Why is B4 Organ 'lonely at the top' ?

Today Native Instruments B4 Organ arrived and I just wonder : Why is NONE of the keyboard / organ brands capable to produce tonewheel-sound like Hammond and NI B4 both do ? (most keyboard 'drawbars' produce toy-sounds)
B4 Organ beats them ALL (as Fran stated)

B4 is a small (200 dollar) software package, runs on MAC or an average PC, even using an inexpensive soundcard !!


btw. funny how NI protects the CD... 2 holes in the surface !! ...... hmm interesting and it makes me curious.

Roel


[This message has been edited by Roel (edited 01-04-2002).]

Hi Roel,

Congratulations on your new organ! At least you should have enough 'space' for it in your house
http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?b4_us

Are you running 'Native Instruments B4' as a standalone program or going thru a digital audio sequencer (Cubase, Cakewalk Sonar, or other)?

There is some debate over which driver(lowest latency) to use: WDM, ASIO, MME etc.

I've been reading that the new Windows WDM (microsoft) drivers are as good (if not better & faster) than the current ASIO standard now. Roel, Which driver are you using? How is the latency?

I'm thinking of running 'B4 organ' via Cakewalk Sonar because Native Instruments just recently started supporting DXi which makes it possible to run it seamlessly thru Cakewalk Sonar, using the latest (and greatest?) WDM drivers.

Btw, I'm curious, has anyone here tried out the other software synth offerings from Native Instruments:

FM7
Pro-52
Reaktor
Dynamo
Absynth


I plan to purchase 'Native Instsruments B4' myself so will be definitely stoping by Native Instrument's booth again at NAMM this year.

- Scott

Scott,
I use the ASIO driver with my 'old' Terratec EWS64XL. The latency is BIG (90 ms) but in the control-panel I reduced the buffer size.
The delay is 'acceptable' now but as you know I ordered the newest DMX6fire with only 2 ms..... so tuesday the latency will be almost zero.

Roel

Do not use mme, I use any direct driver, my desktop at 10ms, my laptop at 20ms...No latency problems...

HI

A german company sampled some Hammond sounds for the 9000 series for those interested, Like the B3 and others.
http://www.cd-soft.de/Sample%20Sounds/Sample_Pack_01/sample_pack_01.html

Eric

Why is NONE of the keyboard / organ brands capable to produce tonewheel-sound like Hammond and NI B4 both do ?
--------------------------------------------

Because the B4 is a computer program running all the time using A LOT of CPU power. The computing power of an arranger is not at par with that of a current windows or mac machine by no means.

Also because only Native Instruments has developed such a software. But it is interesting that about 1 year ago, Native Instrument's developement premises were broken-in and some work stolen.

However, there is definetely a lot of potential in this type of approach to musical instruments. It beats sampling, specially in the dynamics aspect of an instrument. With the B4 simulator one gets GOOD performance even at the highets keys. Why? Because there is a virtual wheel turning and producing sine-wave sounds as in the real instrument. There is no interpolation as in sampled instruments. Because of the high resource demand, latency was a problem, but not any more with the new PC-cpu's and advances. Those guys at Native Instruments are geniuses.

The Hammond and the B4 are "one trick ponies" - no onder they do it so well. BTW - the organs on the 9kpro are SO good, I sold my Hammonmd this week and bought a better guitar. The leslie sim, and the modeled organs on the 9kpro are just fabulous.

What is the minimum requirement as far as CPU is concern in order to use this B4 effectively? My laptop (an old Toshiba Tecra) is a P5-233 mmx with 6 gig HD and 128 RAM.

233Mhz is fine - I guess it's at least a Pentium MMX, right? Mine ran fine on a 200Mhz P1MMX.