Originally Posted By: MarioD
Hi Glenn and welcome,

I use BiaB MIDI almost exclusively. The GM MIDI sound source that comes with BiaB is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to sound quality IMHO. A step up is the included sforzando. It uses the SFZ format. That is the same format as a number of entry level MIDI sound sources like Garritan's and Aria products. These are good sounding instruments, plus some are free.

At the same level are Soundfonts (SF2). There are a number of free SF2s available as well as free VSTis to run them like the

TX16Wx: https://www.tx16wx.com/

The next and biggest step up to great sounding MIDI are expensive programs like Kontakt and SampleTank:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/samplers/kontakt-6/

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletank3/

Both have sales occasionally so wait for one if you can or want.

However both have free players that you can use:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletankcs/

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/samplers/kontakt-6-player/free-download/

I use the full version of Kontakt. The free Kontakt player is only a player, thus you can not manipulate the sounds other than what GUI allows. Also one must be careful as some sounds are only for the full version, but there are a lot of sounds for the player. The full version will play both. I like Kontakt as there are a ton of third party sounds for it, some are free and some very expensive.

Another great sounding program is EastWest Play:

http://www.soundsonline.com/

This has great sounds but it is also very expensive, more so the the above mentioned programs.

The rule of thumb when it comes to MIDI is the more you spend the better the sound BUT if you have a good working of MIDI CCs, pitch bend, etc, you can get some very good sounds out of SF2s and SFZs. They are not as good as the others that I mentioned but they can be OK.

Good luck.


Mario and others, thank you for the great replies. I do understand that MIDI is just data and something has to "play it." I just need some help navigating the options. I would love to have a quick partial cheap solution (ready yesterday) and then a more expensive well-researched very good solution.

Let me be clearer on what I need. I don't want to tinker with the sounds much. I simply want a decent sounding package for composing and singing against. I just don't want to be distracted by bad sound. I am just writing songs and singing standards and doing some vocal improvisation against chord patterns.

On the cheap quick side, I fussed around some with an app called sforzando from Plogue which is on my system, and I do have an sf2 file from another program, with general MIDI instruments, but I don't know how to put it all together. I remember that these sounds are tolerable, not great, and so if it is simple, I would like to install it, if someone can point me to the way to include this in BIAB. I see now in re-reading your post that Soundfonts and Sforzando are two different approaches. Sigh. I did download and install the TX16Wx product; I think it installed a VST, but again, that looks like it is designed for tinkering and shaping the sounds.

So now for my revelation. I do use the Kontakt player with my DAW, but I have never fully grasped that whole world of products that go into it. Did I understand you correctly that libraries of sounds used in Kontakt can somehow be accessed through BIAB? By some driver or something that sends the MIDI to the Kontakt player? Everything I have ever looked at that goes with Kontakt is some kind of very specialized library, strings or horns for example. Is there a basic set of instruments that comes with the player or full version and actually sounds good? I looked at the Kontakt 6 demo just now; it looks like a bunch of specialized sampled instruments (Hybrid Keys, Analog Dreams, etc)...when I used it in my DAW, it was just with a horn package I bought. I currently have the Kontakt 5 player.

I guess SampleTank is the same issue. When I look at it, there are thousands of specialized instruments. I am not sure how this gives me a simple decent sounding jazz quartet or piano ballad to compose with in BIAB. (I do use VSTs inside of my DAW; I just didn't think BIAB supported VSTs.

So that leads me to hardware. Suppose I want to spend some money to just get fine sounds...something that will hook up easily to BIAB and my Scarlett interface and give me quality sound. Something portable and small, I suppose, easy to travel with. Tell me how to spend my money (sorry, for my manners...Please tell me!).

Thanks for any continued help.

Glenn