Virtual instruments

[françois]

Could someone tell me what are today the best virtual instruments and metro under os X ?

is someone working with mach 5 ?

I want to leave some drumkits and GM expanders, but I need some reliable and very good virtual instr.


thanks

françois

[Scoot]

There are very good soundfonts available at http://hammersound.net/cgi-bin/soundlink.pl and they are free.

Pick ones that score over 8 and you should be happy with them.....and if you think they are good enough you could go for scores as low as 6 or 7 and still might find a few good instruments. I have found some of the drumkits fail to always play the drum note that they should. eg.....I can hear it if I click on it in the drum display in the graphic editor, but on playback it doesn't play.

If you have access to a PC (spit!) you can even download the ones that say "The SoundFont you are downloading has been compressed with the sfArk SoundFont compression program. If you haven't already installed this program on your computer, please download it from www.melodymachine.com". PC only but expands/converts to .SF2 so they can work on a mac.


Never seen the mach 5 in action.

Absynth is quite amazing and well worth a look. It can create normal sounding organs and basses or really unreal outer space sounds.
(you can grab a OS9 demo........but I don't think a OSX demo is available).

Sampletank gives you a realistic set of instruments and has enough adjustment to keep you using it for a long time.
You could also just buy a CD of drums if you wanted......or pianos or basses.

The Drum Library from http://www.fxpansion.com/ looks amazing but the manual suggests at least a 733Mhz Mac. No demo......but they do have mp3's of it to hear.


scoot.

[françois]

hello scoot,

I downloaded one hammersound.

Could you now explain me how to insert it in metro ?

for instant the piano sound is in me desktop.
thaanks

françois

[Scoot]

Firstly the soundfonts must be in .sf2 format.
.sfark formats need conversion and there is a expander that works on the PC to do that.

- open metro

- install your piano midi track and note which track it is on (eg. track#1)
it will probably install with quicktime instruments to play it (internal-1)

- open the plugins window and the effects window

- drag the apple DLSMusicDevice across to track#1 in the effects window

- in the effects window you now see DLSMusicDevice, an edit button, soundbank file= None button and a reverb button.

- click on the None button and go and install your piano soundfont from your desktop.
It's best to place all your soundfonts in one folder to access them quickly.

- installing the soundfont on the track where the midi data is, changes the internal-1 to DLSmusicdevice and you can now hear the new instrument playing the music if you hit play.

If you were to install the DLSMusicDevice onto a different track, you would have to add outputs to the DLSMusicDevice bus and select one of the DLSMusicDevice's ports to hear it play.

If the soundfont you picked has more than one instrument, you can select different ones through the bank and program numbers in the graphic editor.

The hammersound site has some very good pianos and drums to download.


scoot.

[braj]

Is this the only way to use soundfonts? I put mine in "/Users/~/Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks" and they show up in the 'Select sound for Channel' menu, but they aren't active when I play the track. I hear the last Quicktime sound played.

[braj]

OK, so I figured out that if I go to Quicktime prefs and set a soundfont as the default synth, then that soundfont will be available in place of the QT synth. Not the best tradeoff. Is there a way around this?

[Scoot]

You can stick them wherever you like.
The most common place/folder you go would be the best place to have them.


Are you sure you have the soundfont ready to work?

If the plugin (DLSMusicDevice) has been placed on a track/aux and a soundfont has been chosen, the graphic editor window should show the port changed to DLS.

If you want to have multiple tracks then you should go to the special menu and select modify outputs and busses and allocate outputs for DLS.


scoot.

[Scoot]

message no longer required........hey why can't I delete it?

[braj]

Well, my issue is that if I use the DLSMusicDevice with SE, then I can't use an external synth like CrystalCarbon or even effects like reverb (only 4 effects or one synth at a time in SE).

If I can get soundfonts to play as a regular Pgm, then I can save that precious effect space for something else. I guess the trick is finding a replacement soundfont that will sound better than the default QT sounds. Not that the QT are all that bad, but I'd like options. I don't know why the soundfonts appear in the 'Select sound for Channel' menu but aren't available for use. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[Scoot]

What is the select sound for channel menu?

Is this the port popup?

[braj]

What is the select sound for channel menu?

Is this the port popup?

From the Graphic Editor window, click Bank or Pgm. It's the resulting window.

[Scoot]

Ahhhh I think all you have done is got the name list of the quicktime instruments but under the titles of DLS, DLS 1, DLS 256 etc.


You need to obtain and open a dls soundfont.

Here is the soundfont called realfont 2.1 installed and it covers a lot of the quicktime sounds but is a lot better.

[braj]

Sorry, scoot, but your using DLS, I'm not. Here's the menu I'm talking about. If I go to Quicktime Prefs and set any of these as the default, they will be the only ones available. So, I could go find a GM/GS soundfont that sounds better than the default and keep all the mappings, but I still wouldn't be able to just select one from this list and use it.

[braj]

OK, so I figured it out: the Output in the Section window needs to be set to Internal. The QT sounds are set to Built-in audio, and I guess I confused Built-in to be the same as Internal. Anyway, I have it working now with Soundfonts -not- having to be used by the DLS synth, so I don't lose that channel when using something other than the QT instruments.

Whoopee! Happy New Year! I have so much to learn with Metro.

[Scoot]

Now I'm confused.
I thought QT was on internal and built in was to do with audio tracks.

How'd you get all these menu options in the picture?

What are these options? Mappings/Layouts?
Are they actually soundfonts that play in QT or are we talking about 2 different things and you're calling them soundfonts?


scoot.