I appreciate all the tips and suggestions. I’ve been out of town for a couple of days and haven’t been able to respond.

I think Bob, aka jazzmammal, made some points I should address in order to clarify what I’m looking for:

Quote:

I have the full Sampletank with Omnisynth and Sonicsynth with something like 4,000 instruments. Yes, Omnisynth is a pretty good sounding GM bank but it does not just load up and play seamlessly like the other synths we're talking about here. As you know you have to manually set up each instrument for each song. That may or may not be a big deal though. For me it is because I do all kinds of different stuff but Bob sounds like he's only doing bluegrass and that's it. He may be satisfied with creating one custom soundbank in Sampletank for all his stuff and be happy as a clam. If he's ok with that, then realize that GM is irrelevant. He can set up a custom soundbank using killer non GM sounds in any synth and do the same thing especially if all he's using is 3 or 4 basic instruments. You don't need or care about a GM bank for that, find a synth that has the sounds you like.
The really cool thing about using a good GM synth that loads up and just plays with Biab is when you go through a bunch of different songs with different instrumentation. If one song has acoustic bass, electric piano and vibes and the next has electric bass, acoustic piano, a guitar and sax, it's cool that Biab can just grab those instruments from the synth without any input from you. Using Omnisynth, you're stopping, going into the Sampletank control panel and changing the instruments on whatever midi channel Biab put them on.



Actually I play several different styles of music, not just bluegrass. But these other styles have been addressed with some good versions of Real Styles and Real Tracks, therefore I can get good sounds for these styles. Most all of the Real Styles, Real Tracks and midi styles for bluegrass, newgrass and dawg music are written with the wrong note value. They are programmed in 16th’s instead of 8th’s. They are written in 8th’s.

We actually had a pretty lengthy discussion here on the forum about this a few months ago. Peter Green joined the discussion with several posts, as did several other members, so I won’t try to restart that debate. Peter said the problem would be addressed in the future. But changes in the program sometimes take quite a while.

In the meantime, I wish I could find a “good GM synth that loads up and just plays with Biab”, as Bob stated. I don’t want to have to tweak the synth for each song I load.

But as Mac pointed out:

Quote:

Be advised that one can sample an acousic guitar out the wazoo, get perfect loops, etc. -- yet when played back in a MIDI file, they can still sound quite unrealistic.

We all tend to be more critical about the MIDI instrument(s) that we actually play and love than the other sounds. That's typical. A pianist hates the MIDI piano, most guitar players find the piano to be authentic to their ears, etc.



So I may be out of luck until PG addresses the note value problem for bluegrass and newgrass in Real Tracks and Real Styles. I’ve used BIAB for 10 years or more and this has always been my one gripe about the program.

Thanks all.

Bob

Bob
................................
http://soundcloud.com/bobcflatpicke/music-in-the-mountains