Quote:

I've looked at the SD2 and liked some of the sounds it offers, but in my opinion, the flute is just a bit too airy. The one I heard in Personal Orchestra is beautiful. If you're trying to do a celtic type of sound, the SD2 wouldn't quite fit in IMHO.



Charles, if you're going to be this precise and picky you're crusin' for a brusin' when it comes to working with computer based music. You're going to need a whole rack full of very expensive stuff to be fully satisfied. Now, this is fine, pro musicians do that all the time, they've got good ears, they know what they want and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. All I'm saying is be prepared to spend some serious cash. That Tyros just mentioned costs upwards of $4,000 if it's the new model. The Ketron costs $400. GPO is $3-400 or so but it won't have everything you want for sound, you will be looking for other synths to go along with it. It will add up fast.
I think but of course I'm not sure, you are not familiar with General Midi and how that factors into this. GM is a standard that allows a user to simply plug in a synth or use a software synth-softsynth-and simply hit play and listen to the tune. The problem is GM is very limited. GPO for example is not GM because all those killer sounds do not comform to the GM standard. Garritan uses it's own player as a plug in. That's another whole thing you have to learn. That means you have to set up and configure each instrument for each song you want to play before you hear anything. Biab only has one midi output port so you can only use one synth at a time but of course there's workarounds for that that the pros use. There's addon software you can buy that allows Biab to work with a whole rack of softsynths. Another whole geek level course in midi. That is inconvienent, time consuming and requires knowledge but you will get great sound that way.
The point here is GM is simple, fast and you can listen to a whole list of songs one after the other with no input from you once you have everything set up. The problem is there's only a handful of GM synths that sound good. When we talk about the VSC, the Coyote Wavetable, the Ketron, those are all GM synths. The VSC and Wavetable sound like crap imho but they're enough to get you started. What I'm talking about is way more complex than that.
If you're going to be that picky about your sound quality be prepared for a long and expensive process to get all the pieces together and also be prepared to spend a consderable amount of time learning it. Most of us came to realize all that is just not worth it for a hobby and we became willing to compromise. The Ketron, the Roland Sonic Cell or SD-50, Sampletank with the GM Omnisynth, a few others are good GM compromises for the money.

Just a little heads up.

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.