Can anyone recommend a free VSTi synth or sampler I can use instead of Coyote or SamapleTank?
I'm looking for some help troubleshooting a problem with my midi setup. I've been using RealBand for years and have occasionally had some glitches but things really came to a grinding halt on my last song.
During playback or recording the location marker stopped and all functionality froze. The audio continued for a short while then became very choppy. This happened at the same points in the song on every playback. I noticed the CPU usage spike to 30% at these points. I verified this in the Windows Task Manager.
I restarted the RB and rebooted the computer several times but the same problem returned. I then reinstalled the BiaB s/w suite from the hard drive. No change.
Then I started dissecting the song peeling off all the plugins from all the tracks which helped a little but still had the choppy playback.
Finally, I started removing tracks. I discovered the problem was with the midi tracks. I then switch from Coyote Wave table to SampleTank 2.5 and the choppy playback was avoided.
So here's where I'm stuck. The free SampleTank that came with BiaB does not have the range of instruments I need to give up using Coyote. I get totally lost looking online for free VSTi synths and samplers.
Can anyone recommend a free VSTi synth or sampler I can use instead of Coyote or SamapleTank?
Are you setting Coyote WT as the synth for each midi track as you need it?
If so, you may find it more productive to set it as the default synth so that every MIDI track automatically uses it unless you specify another synth. This is what I do and it works fine for me.
To do this, go to "Options | Preferences | MIDI" and...
BassMidi VSTi is a featherweight audio 32/64 plugin that provides you with a comprehensive audio synthesizer and various MIDI controllers for processing and for simulating traditional recording processes. Portable VST MIDI synthesizer based on the BassMidi audio libraries
As with all VST (short for Virtual Studio Technology) plugins, it requires the presence of a VST host or a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), as well as some SF2 or SFZ soundfonts in order to work.
This is probably the best time to point out that BassMidi VSTi works on both x86 and x64 systems and should be to do so with the vast majority of VST hosts out there, but it has been tested mainly on SAVIHost, VSTHost, Reaper, Cubase LE Elements 8 and Soundfont Midi Player. Before we go even further, please note that the usage of host bridges is not recommended. Straightforward and fairly well-documented deployment procedure
As mentioned before, you need to make sure that a VST Host is installed on your computer's system. Start off by copying the Bass.dll and Bassmidi.dll components to the same directory as BassMidiVsti.dll.
Copying BassMidiVsti.vstxml and Bassflac.dll are both optional, as the formers can be used for simplifying the customization process while the latter is only required if you intend on using FLAC compressed SFZ files.
It is worth mentioning that BassMidi VSTi is perfectly capable of supporting up to five different stacked soundfonts, twelve reverb or chorus effect types, and fourteen parameters for options that are not Midi accessible. Widely-accessible and lightweight VST plugin for Windows
Taking everything into account, BassMidi VSTi is a lightweight and very accessible plugin that can be deployed and used without much effort on most Windows platforms out there.
The plugin packs a simple main editor interface, supports a fair number of stacked soundfonts, audio effects, and parameter controllers, and it also comes with a decent documentation section, meant to help even the most novice of users find their way around it.
Thanks for posting this. In the last few days, I tried downloading the free version of Sample Tank 3. IK Multimedia told me there were only two files to deal with, but that isn't so. It downloads files in about five places. I never got it to work and I gave up.
So I posted about needing help with basic terminology. Some people suggested Windows for Dummies. Charlie turned me on to a Berklee course (which I have signed up for).
However, nothing I have found gives me the kind of of info you just posted. And this is the exact kind of thing I need to understand. But it is like reading Greek.
Is there a reference that will explain this kind of thing to me? How did you learn it?
If the above steps don't solve your problem, please give our tech support line a call on Tuesday (Monday's a holiday here). I'd be very surprised if we can't resolve your playback issues.
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
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