PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Not new to biab but new to vst plugins

If you own Komplete I thought you would own Kontakt rather than the Kontakt player, both are samplers rather than GM synths. A GM synth, e.g. Roland VSC, fortedxi, is simply an applkicarion that substitutes a list of improved (viz compared to MIDI) sounds which are equivilent to the MIDI sounds. For example sound 1 would be a better piano sound - possibly a sampled piano, sound 15 a better tubular bells. The full list is 128 sounds. A GM synth simply gives you improved sounds. GM is a convention that says if I ask for sound 1 then I get a grand piano, if I ask for list item 15 then I want a tubular bell. It does not say the quality of the sound. A GM synth provided a better quality sound than MIDI synthetic sounds - frequently the sound is an acutal set of samples, but not always. A GM synth's sound set is better than synthesised sounds (like the dreadful trumpets) but it is a longt way from the best sounds. Getting a 'real' acoustic sounding sound together has many different aspects - some of which are very difficult to achieve for certain instruments - vibrato for example , can come in zillions of forms as can tonguing. A top VST for a piano will contain gigabytes of carefully layered samples for each note, meticulously recorded for each dynamic and volume, then there is the matter of reverb and ambience... your humble GM synth cant do all this - yet it is better aurally than basic synthesised sound of the WIndows type.

I use fortedxi with my 64 bit system and it works. I also have Kontakt but would not use it for this purpose. Kotakt is very powerful - overkill really for such a task. I am not sure if its possible to use it in this way. My Kontakt is 64 bit I dont know if it runs in 32 bit BAIB. If you have RealBand then this might be more suitable.

I am new here so take my answers with a little caution, but purchasing ForteDXI is inexpensive, an easy option and is working here. RealBand is more suitable for adding guest VSTs such as the Komplete stuff. If you go that way you might want to read my post on real band set up
http://www.pgmusic.com/ubbthreads/showfl...ge=0#Post255466

The best backing tracks of all are the real tracks - unquestionably. A good GM synth is better than straight MIDI, but not quite as authentic as the real thing used in real tracks.

Zero