You've got it all backwards Roy. I know it sort of "looks" like PG is supporting or is affiliated with all these DXi's and VST's but they have nothing to do with them. For the TTS-1 all Peter is doing is letting everybody know a half decent GM plugin is available at Bandlab. That's it. As for Forte that's another one that came and went and nobody has heard anything about it in at least 10 years. I do know when it first came out all the guy did was find free samples on the web and put them into this simple DXi program he created. And it was only 32 bit. It can be a real challenge to remake a plugin to 64 bit. If there's no money in it, why would someone bother? He sold quite a few of them to us users for $39.95 I think and then as the years went by, no updates, no communication, no nothing. For all I know he died in a car crash.

The Sforzando is basically the same thing just in sfz format. You can find free soundfonts on the web and load them in. That's all Forte did at the time. People think there's some huge market for GM soundsets. 95% of music producers including guys like us sitting at home messing around could care less about GM or General Midi. All it's really used for is for people who send midi files to each other. If one guy used a Roland synth and the other guy uses Yamaha, they're not compatible so GM was created. works fine as far as it goes but GM is very limited. It only has 128 sound patches and maybe a dozen of those are sound effects like hand claps, helicopter, door slam, dog barking, etc. It's for gaming and really simple midi files. A full blown synth like one of my hardware keyboards or something like Kontakt has literally thousands of patches. Want an overdriven guitar, they'll have 20, 30 or even more to choose from. GM gives you a grand total of 1 as in ONE. Same for an acoustic piano, a Rhodes, basses, whatever. I think GM gives you 3 basses, an acoustic, a finger pick and a fretless. That's it.

I'm not knocking anyone, many Biab users only have basic requirements for midi. As long as it sounds decent they don't care about having a choice between three Yamaha models of piano, 3 sizes of Steinway, a couple of Baldwins both full grand and uprights and other makes, 100 different types of guitars including 6 string, 12 string, Dobro's hardbody, semi hollow, from all the manufacturers like Gibson, Gretch, Martin, Fender whatever. These are not just names for show, they actually recorded all those instruments and converted them for use in their proprietary software.

That level of choice is not for everybody and that's fine. If you're one of those then use the TTS-1 or Sforzando, either one could be all you need.

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.