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I use TTS for my first run though, then i add sampletank, and Jamstix to upgrade the sounds. I bought Sampletank on the group buy last year, and i find the pianos very good, and the guitars decent. I use the Martin 6, and 12, and the jazz bass a lot.
For strings it depends, usually i use TTS if it is a string track that is just fill in type, or sampletank, has a couple fair ones. I also bought Sonar X1 essentials this year, and it came with dimension pro lite, and sound center, and the three other small samplers. One is strings, and i found a few of them pretty good so far, especially the violins and such.
I love RTs, but they do not handle everything especially on cover tunes, i need to follow the signature sounds i need great sounds.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96
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I'm going to retract my complaints about the GPO solo violin. I spent some time playing with it, and while the results aren't as intense as the Gypsy violin, the results are good enough for me: GPO Solo Violin TestThe "plain" legato instrument is nice, but it really helps to insert MIDI events - especially the pitch wheel (for sliding into notes) and the mod wheel (Garritan uses it to control volume). I'm not sure I could use it for a fiddle, because it doesn't have the same sort of "bite", but at least I have no excuse not to use it anymore.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Sounds great to me David ! Nice work on the expression. Would love to have a peek at your RB midi tracks to analyze.
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OK, I'm new to VSTi's, and know next to nothing about them.
I pretty much use BIAB,Realtracks, Sonar and my trusty Tyros1 to make my music right now.
I've tried software synthesizers in the past but wasn't happy with the sounds or the delay.
After reading this thread I've been investigating and am completely blowin' away by the Garritan products.
My question is can they realistically be used in real time playing or just when you render?
I would love to use some of the Garritan instruments when playing my midi wind instrument real-time.
Tim
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Thanks Mitch! Sorry, I should have noted that I did it in Reaper, not RB. I sort of did it as an exercise to learn Reaper's piano roll mode, and played around with a lot of MIDI controllers I've ignored in the past. I've given RB a number of tries, but it never seems to click for me. One of these days... If you're still interested, here's the MIDI file exported from Reaper. I had used the Steinway Piano on channel 1, and the Violin 3 Solo KS on channel 2. Violin 1 Solo KS is also a good match. I can't test the upload in RB, because I accidentally nuked my external USB hard drives a couple of days ago, including my BiaB drive. I've got a BiaB backup hanging around here somewhere, but for the moment doing I'm without it.  In any event, Aria can load the MIDI file, so I suspect that RB will be able to load it without any problems.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Quote:
My question is can they realistically be used in real time playing or just when you render?
GPO is pretty lightweight. I haven't had any problems playing multiple instruments with it on my machine. I've been told JABB is heavier, and by default, the JABB instruments are monophonic. There's probably a way around that, but I haven't had time to dig into it.
The biggest irritation (for me) is Garritan's use of the Mod wheel to control volume. Most applications (including BiaB) use the Mod to increase the vibrato of an instrument). So BiaB will set the Mod wheel controller value to 0, which effectively turns off the instrument.
You can get around this by embedding a MIDI Mod wheel event in the track, but you also have to make sure you've got it turned off in BiaB's embellished playback options, too.
It would be great if BiaB had a workaround for this. The sounds are nice, and relative to other libraries, it's a great deal.
But that Mod wheel... 
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Thanks for the file David ! Nice event editing for sure ! Patch switches, mod wheel (volume). Good stuff !
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nice example of how good a Garritan soloist can sound, David!
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I learned a lot while doing this. Digging into JABB (when I get some spare time) is going to be a similar education. I've listened to the demos, and listened to the instruments, and they're worlds apart in terms of expressiveness. I'm sure a lot of the magic lies in the MIDI editing.
I always hope I can get the software to do all the dirty work, but that's rarely the case (although some of it is getting really good). RealTracks are great, because they've already got all the nuance there.
I should mention that I've had some level of luck mixing rendered MIDI and RealTracks as well. I'll render the melody with a nice MIDI instrument, and then find a few spots where I can embed some RealTrack bits. Sort of like the trick of adding sampled breath or fingers sliding over the guitar string. But it doesn't take much to go overboard with that, either.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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When I did my first few tunes with the Garritan stuff I knew nothing about the Piano Roll, midi controllers. Having a need sure does make one dig in and find how to get the results. Now... 'piece-o-cake' !  Your file has given me more insight into using the different KS patches ie. switching to pizz strings, then back to 'normal' etc.
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"The biggest irritation (for me) is Garritan's use of the Mod wheel to control volume"
Yeah that would be irritating.
Thanks for your response.
Tim
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Quote:
My question is can they realistically be used in real time playing or just when you render?
I would love to use some of the Garritan instruments when playing my midi wind instrument real-time.
Tim
Yes, real time playing is the reason ASIO was invented. ASIO allows you to reduce the latency delay to acceptable levels when you play live using a soft synth.
Also, you made a comment about Garritan using the mod wheel for volume. Soft synths are usually played using a keyboard controller, some use a wind or guitar controller. You could use your Tyros for that too. Good controllers of any type have both a pitch and mod wheel, some like Roland use a X/Y joystick so one control does both pitch and modulation. Those two controllers are placed next to each other to the left of the keyboard for a reason. It's much easier to play your part with your right hand and use the controls with your left for the articulations. Much better than trying coordinate a volume pedal with your foot and your left hand for pitch while playing the part with your right hand. People do it all kinds of ways of course but primarily it's as I described for live playing. You can record the articulations after the fact but to me anyway, you lose the feel you get when you're doing the whole thing in one shot.
In these forums people are understandably focused on how to use these things in Biab. Biab is not designed for something like Garritan except for the basic sounds, you should use a sequencer like Real Band or Sonar for recording all those nuances with a keyboard controller.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Expert
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Exclusively my hardware synth (Roland Juno-D).
Are there other or 'better' patches available?
Who knows. Maybe.
But I need to spend what little time I have available making music and not messing around searching for/purchasing/installing/configuring stuff.
Marc
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I don't know if this relevant or not, because I use hardware synths: - Two Roland MT-32's
- Two Roland SC-55's
- Two Peavey Sample Players
- One Akai sampler
- Two Yamaha VL70m's
- Two Yamaha TX81z's
- One Korg DDD-5
- One Korg DS-8
- One Korg i3
- One Edirol SD-90
Each synth has its strong instrument sounds and its weak instrument sounds. The challenge and part of the fun is to pick the right sound for the right instrument from the thousands of voices I have available to me. The doubled MT-32 and SC-55 synths are due to the days when I brought sound modules to the gig, and needed a spare "just in case". I would prefer to have different synths to have different sounds, but sometimes layering two identical sounds panning one hard L and the other hard R or layering and detuning one just a few tics works wonders.
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Dad, how will I know when I've become an adult.
When your day is ruined because they rearranged the grocery store.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Reason 3. I also have a Roland JV-1010 hardware module, but I mostly use it for straight recording.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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