Originally Posted By: Mike "ex-genius" Kelley
Are we saying that this is what is needed for the easiest use in BIAB? I used to LOVE the Garritan strings and horns (I'm big into orchestral stuff) but is that not possible (or easy) to use with this program? And I'd rather not get any more hardware if I can avoid it (I still have what used to be considered the best midi sound modules out there -- don't even know if I could hook them up anymore as I don't even have a midi interface on my computer anymore).


Love your username. Ex=Genius. You have to ask yourself one important question:

Do you want easy or do you want good?

Good requires work, easy is well, easy. As in it's so easy a caveman could do it. But is a caveman going to reproduce a complex orchestral piece that sounds great using midi?

I think you know the answer to that one.

Easy is GM. GM is for the guy who does not understand midi and just wants to enter some chords and hit Play. That's fine but that's NOT where the pros reside and I think you know that already since you used to beta test Gary's stuff, you're still a pro even if somewhat out of date now. The best synths both soft and hard do not even have a GM soundbank because pros could care less about GM. Too limiting. A GM soundbank only has one or two examples of each instrument while even a semi pro level softsynth like SampleTank 3 has several DOZEN examples to choose from. GM gives you one acoustic nylon guitar for example. ST3 gives you a whole bunch of Martins with different strings, Taylors with different strings and many more. Just for one GM instrument. Same with all the other instruments. GM gives you two acoustic pianos. Standard and bright. Gee, how useful. How about a Yamana concert grand, a Yamaha 7 foot, a Yamaha studio grand, as Yamaha upright? Then under those different types of Yamaha pianos there are controls for closed lid, partial opened lid and full open lid. Same with Steinway and other famous brands. ST3 literally has
THOUSANDS of patches. GM? you get a whopping 128 and about 20 of those are special effect sounds like a helicopter, phone ringing and gunshot. The regular price for ST3 is about $350 which includes tons of sounds and then they have separate sound libraries for $50-150 each. ST3 is pretty much the least expensive of the higher quality softsynths.

So, how does this work? You're putting together a song. That song has the usual guitar, bass, drums, keys, maybe strings and a soloist. You open up ST3's window and manually select which of those many different versions of those instruments you want to use. To start you can create a default set of those instruments that you can load all at once. Doesn't take too long, later you can change all of them.

The good news is you said you still have all your sound modules. All you need then is a basic midi interface. You can get one for like thirty bucks. Then you assign the patches manually from one of your modules similar to how I described using ST3. It's clunkier using hardware and running midi and audio cables but for now you want cheap, that's cheap because you already own them.

Personally I would upgrade to a good audio/midi interface so you can plug a mic in or a keyboard and record them directly. Audio/midi interfaces are around $100-200. There are tons of threads here asking about which ones to get, just do a forum search.

I can tell you have pro ears even if your former pro mind is out of date. You will not be happy with a $50 basic GM synth like the Forte Dxi or TTS-1.

One more thing and that is all the Real Tracks. RT's are amazing but you do not have note level control over them like you do with midi. You could be very happy just using the RT's and wind up forgetting about midi but I have a feeling once you get into this given your background, you'll get into midi again. The best users on this forum are very good with both and that's what it takes to get the best out these programs.

Sometimes you just have to jump into something on faith. Talking only goes so far. I think you should just buy the full boat Ultrapak, understand the 30 day money back guarantee and get on it.

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.