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Hi all,

I wonder if someone could briefly tell me (a non techie person) what is the difference between realtracks and samples that come with other musical software?

Don't other software packages that have samples also get real musicians to initially play the sample to start with? so I'm finding it difficult to understand the underlying differences.

Thanks
Musiclover



Everybody has come at your answer from different directions and are pretty much correct. I'm going to make an assumption as to what you meant by your question.
When most musicians refer to samples they mean individual notes like when I play a sax patch on my Kurzweil keyboard. I hit a key, I hear a note that sounds like a sax. Change patches to piano, I hit a note, I hear a piano and so on. When you say "samples that come with other software" I'm assuming you mean single note samples like a piano library of a sampled Steinway or whatever. Loops are different and I wouldn't use the term loops in reference to RT's. Sort of I guess but really quite different.
Real Tracks do not go down to level of a single note, I think the smallest increment is a full bar but I'm not sure. RT's are studio recordings of phrases played in a whole bunch of different styles by pro players. As audio files you can not alter them unless you're a real wizard with audio editing. The notes that appear in notation are simply a way for you to see what is being played. Changing the note in the display has no effect on the audio file just like you can't change a note in the guitar part on a commercial CD. There are both good and bad in this. The good is obvious, the outstanding audio quality and the fact it's a live player laying down the phrases not just individual notes. The bad is they all start sounding the same after a while. Say you like the Eagles type of sound so you do 10 tunes using the Southern Rock strumming guitar. True, there are some variations but it's clear that those tracks were laid down by the same player in the same style and your 10 tunes are going to have essentially the same guitar part. That's why the library of RT's is already huge and getting larger. There are lots of different strumming guitar parts now and even though some may not match what the Eagles did, they can sound pretty good in the mix. The more the better from that point of view.
Using midi, you can write out exact parts with detailed variations that fit your tune perfectly but then those are midi parts and you have to trigger a synth with them. Some midi parts can sound pretty good but nothing like a live player. That's why people spend thousands on different hardware and software synths and then many hours tweaking them in their computers to make them sound as close to a real player as they can.
There's no one perfect answer but the RT's really do add a lot imho. I work mostly in Real Band using a combination of midi and audio tracks including RT's. We're trying to duplicate the sound of a multi million dollar studio using pro players here in a bedroom in my case. It's amazing how good it can sound now.

Bob

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