Sagan Technology Metro

by **Sigmon** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 9:41 pm

Ok I'm a begginner still and i have a few questions. If I get a powerbook and have an oxygen 8 midi controller, and get metro 6.0, what kind of audio interface would someone recomend that would be: 1.) Portable, 2.) have midi capabilities. Really in a nutshell is what I want to do is create music with midi, doing drums and stuff you couldn't really do at home or on the road such as orchestras etc. and audo, such as recording guitars, bass, and vocals with my pod. At my school last year we used metro 5 to do midi compositions and programming drums with the sequencer was so extrememly easy, i just always wondered if it was possible to create the drums, and play and record audio at the same time to manifest rough ideas for songs. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

by **Scoot** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 11:00 pm

A good start would be - http://www.audiomidi.com/hardware/audio_usb.cfm or other similar pages.

I don't really know how many inputs you want and whether you'd use USB or firewire.

Maybe if you get together your possible buys, you could come back and ask if anyone has had any experience with them....to get opinions on what to expect.

You can easily have midi drum data laid down and played back using soundfonts or an external synth........you could also get a mixer involved and hear the drums in headphones perhaps, while laying down your guitar tracks.

scoot.

by **Sigmon** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 5:26 pm

So i think I would need to buy synth such as roland xv-20-20 and connect that after the oxygen 8 than into a midi interface than the computer, and would it be possible to have that set up and an audio interface such as the mbox into another usb port and do midi and audio at the same time with metro. Would i be able to playback the midi and listen and record audio with my guitar? Thanks again

by **Jerm** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 6:23 pm

I wouldn't recommend the mbox. I have heard of horror stories trying to use DigiDesign hardware without DigiDesign software. From what I hear their drivers are not written correctly for Mac OS X.

If you are going to spend up to $500 on audio hardware you can get a much better deal.

by **Scoot** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 9:00 pm

What is the roland synth for?

If it is for banks of sounds, you could do it cheaper with something like sampletank or for free with soundfonts.

Once you have a midi interface to connect to the mac, you have the basics covered on the midi side of things.

Anything sold by digidesign seems to be more expensive than any other company and most of the time you're stuck with their limited LE software.
Yes you may get a 'complete' system but at a premium price.

scoot.

by **Sigmon** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 11:57 pm

Hey thanks I feel I'm coming closer and closer. I'm sorry but with sample tanks or sound fonts, are those files you install to your hard drive or how do those work? Would you be able to get drumkit sounds for instance middle c is the kick drum c# is a snare etc. and violins and stuff? Secondly would I be able to run a midi interface and audio interface at the same time with metro 6.0? What kind of portable audio interfaces, whether it be usb or firewire are out there that are known to work well with the metro software? Again sorry for lack of experience and thanks for all the information.

by **Scoot** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 1:50 am

Do you have a mac now?
Does it run OSX?

If so you can download and hear soundfonts straight away.

Sampletank is a VST plugin and can drive the piano roll in the graphic editor with much better sounds than the standard quicktime ones.

Soundfonts do the same thing but you drag across the DLSmusicdevice plugin to your track and then import the soundfont onto it.

scoot.

by **kaboombahchuck** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 9:18 am

Sigmon,
I'll dumb down it abit for ya. (no offence intended)

Sample tank is a soft sampler (a program you would intall in your computer). In essance you can load a sound file(AIFF) or just about any other type of sound file, assign the peramiters (note range, velocity control, panning, ect). Once you have the samples set up, you will be able to controll the samples with the piano roll. I'm sure it will accept soundfont files (.sf2), if so you could load a .sf2 file of a drum kit, and wah-lah, you have a midi controllable drumkit.

Sound fonts are samples ready to load into an accaptable sampler (software or hardware). They are available on the web for free (some are good, some not so good), and are files you would save in a folder. The problem with most sites that host .sf2 files, is they compress them with odd compresion programs, that will usually only work on PC's (might be a good time to have a friend with a PC, my little brother covers that sort of thing for me). In Metro 6 using OS X (I use Panther) there is no need for a soft sampler, as they can be directly imported using the before mentioned manner (see post by Scoot). So basically there are litterally thousands of free .sf2 files on the web, with just about every imaginable sound (synths, drums, woodwinds, strings, brass, bass,,, get the picture). In fact, I just followed Scoots instructions, and it worked! I sqeeled like a JR Hight girl! With all the sound fonts I have, I can pretty much retire all of my synths.

by **Scoot** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 6:25 pm

One thing about the soundfonts - they're very CPU intensive.

If you have a machine like my G4 450Mhz you could easily bring the mac to a grinding halt with 2-3 complex soundfonts.
I guess the higher the quality of samples, the less tracks you can run at once.

As far as sampletank goes there is a free version available that works with about 20 different instruments.....so you get a reasonable piano, bass and a few other voices.

My question to kaboombahchuck is - have you actually used your own aiff's with sampletank? Each 'voice' seems to have 3 files - .sth, .sti and .stw
So I thought they had to be in this format to work.

scoot.

by **Jerm** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 6:31 pm

I am pretty sure that sampletank does not work with .sf2 files. However, Sampletank II is a lot more flexible in what it can import.

by **kaboombahchuck** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 11:03 pm

Scoot,
Actually, I have never used sample tank. I use Vsamp on my 350mhz iMac, running OS 9, Metro 5. With Vsamp I was able to import AIFF, .sf2, and sample cell files. It is a bit intencive when it comes to importing raw AIFF, and setting them up, but well worth the work. I was looking at native instrumen soft samplers when I found Vsamp. Seemed Vsamp was much more configurable than the NI stuff, at about 1/10th the cost.

I found what you were saying about directly importing the .sf2's into the sequencer being a cpu hog interesting. So far I'm running 3 tracks. I'm gonna keep on going till I run out, so I'll know the limit. Should be interesting.

by **Jerm** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 11:18 pm

Note that you will get better performance if you use fewer instances of the DLS plug-in. Since each instance is 16 part multi-timbral you should be able to get quite a few sounds.

by **Scoot** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 6:21 am

It's also how many notes are playing at any given point, that must have something to do with it.

by **Sigmon** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 7:37 pm

Thanks a ton guys. I've been to other message boards and they all give me retarted answers. This is the first place I've been where people have given me answers I can use. I appreciate all the help!

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