Quote:

See what Bob Norton wrote five posts above.



Notes is of course correct when he says GM "sounds" are just a number but in a practical sense, the big companies don't usually put their best sounds in the GM bank. Why? Because it's not just the sound, GM is still limited in how articulations and a bunch of other midi controls are implemented. Garritan, Giga and probably all of them use their own proprietary soundbanks to allow the performer to do stuff like use velocity switching on a keyboard or other controllers to put attack, certain lipping techniques in brass samples, bowing effects in string samples, etc. GM doesn't allow for that kind of detail so to say GM is just a number doesn't tell the whole story. Obviously the big companies could care less about GM because they don't advertise it at all but the big name synths do have decent sounding GM soundbanks probably because they don't want to look bad to the few who actually use it. They want to push why their custom solo instrument soundbank or whatever blows everybody's else's solo instruments out of the water like the breathy jazz sax on my Korg. It's really good but it's not in the GM bank and I'm sure it's because of different midi implementation Korg is using that's not GM standard plus it gives them something to brag about.
The other thing is the limited number of slots for the sounds. There's only 2 acoustic pianos in a GM bank, acoustic and bright. Any decent big name synth has like 20 acoustic pianos and if you want your stuff to really sound good you need access to all of them. A 6 foot jazz grand would fit best for one tune and a Baldwin upright might be best in another. Same thing for all the other instruments.

Bob

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