To keep you from reading all this - I have NOT actually played with live function. Also from a sound prospective - you need to listen to demos and decide that on your own. But I will say, having both ST2 XL l and ST3, which comes with full ST2 XL sound set plus new ST 3 sounds, I WOULD NOT pay FULL MSRP for ST3 (I wouldn't pay it for Kontakt either) - wait for a sale (and you just missed the biggie holiday sale) .


Back to "live function" question, this will be no help so consider my post just frivolous and useless filler. I have NOT ventured into the Live function area yet except to play the demos - interesting but…..

To one specific use of Live: On IK forum - it was alluded to that between using Multi's and the Live function you could make a GM compatible set. However, when IK rep was pressed, no real info on how to do this has been made available (yet).

I've been meaning to take a few days and try to see how it could be done, but I have a real life outside of figuring out how to make SW do stuff that is not already built-in grin .

I think this use of Live function to make a GM set would end up like trying to do a similar GM feat in Kontakt. You'd have to pre-load 16 parts with 128 patches (2048 total) - that is a hell of a lot of system memory - and would probably grind even the most robust PC to a halt quickly.

Actually only need to pre-load 15 parts (channels) because part/ch 10 is GM drums and you could pre-load that with just 2 or 3 drum kits that would still be 1905 patches.

Even with judicious picking for the GM stand-in instruments/patches (ignoring FX sounds, nontraditional instruments, and general GM crapola sounds) like maybe: a few pianos (acu. and EP's), a few organs (B3 and Vox) , vibraphone (love me some vibes!), a few horns, woodwinds, reeds, guitars (2 or 3) , basses (2 maybe), strings (one solo, one ensemble) , etc. you might get it down to say 40-50'ish sounds so around 600 to 750 instruments (15 x 40 to 15 x 50'ish) - still a whole lot of memory tied up.

Clearly, marking ST 3 a GM sound generator should NOT be the reason to buy it and obviously not what IK had in mind for Live function. GM is not the end all for me either but when using BIAB having a VSTi/DXi that CAN BE used as GM it is a major PLUS.

Larry

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