Nigel, here's the question you have to answer. How much work do you want to do after you're entered your chords and selected a style in Biab BEFORE you hit play? Before I expand on that a little background about General MIdi (GM) and what it is.

Midi has no sound as you've found out. Midi is simply a set of computer instructions telling a synth what to play. That synth can be a hardware module, a keyboard or a piece of software (softsynth).

GM is a basic soundset consisting of 128 sounds which include special effects like a gunshot, helicopter, door slam and others. You get 2 pianos, 2 electric pianos, one of 3 types of guitar each, one vibes, acoustic and electric basses, one each, one slap I think and so on. Very limited. The big deal is all those sounds are set to the GM patch standard. You give a GM song to me, I put it into my system and as long as I use a GM synth all the instruments will be correct. They could sound different if I have a different GM synth than yours but all the instruments and effects match.

But, you send a non GM song created with Kontakt to me and I try to play it it will sound like a fight in a junkyard because I don't have Kontakt. I have to manually look at each part and match up the instruments and midi channels myself with whatever synth I'm using before I can play it. This is why btw people will ask why some midi file they downloaded won't play correctly. This is usually the reason.

The second big deal is sound quality. GM is GM as far as instructions and patches are concerned but sound quality is up to what GM synth you're using. The third big deal is convenience. By that I mean in Biab all you do is select a GM synth and hit Play. Biab is set up to use GM as the default.

So, are you interested in spending a considerable amount of time using a Non GM synth like Kontakt, selecting each midi channel manually, selecting each instrument manually (remember GM gives you one guitar for each type, Kontakt has dozens), playing around with the individual instrument controls of which there are many and doing all that before you hit Play?

If you think about it and decide you're really not interested in doing that much work before you can hear anything then you need to focus on the best GM synth you can find. This is the reason most of us when using Biab to audition atyles, test out different arrangements etc only care about using a decent GM synth in Biab itself. If you want to really take your song further, make it sound the best possible it's easier to do it in a DAW. You already have a free DAW included in your package, it's called Real Band. It has 48 tracks, works with Biab files and it works with Kontakt and other VST's perfectly. You should be checking out Real Band at the same time you're working with Biab, you'll find RB is pretty cool too.

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.