Improving General Midi Sounds

[Shiva]

Sibelius have the add-ons of the GPO Sibelius Edition and Kontakt Player Gold. They could be a possible solution?

[r590]

Ivory is probably the best piano sample library available. Its pricey but quite astounding. 40gb.

[crimson]

I just did some experimenting with Sibelius and Synful Orchestra, and I found out that Synful does play articulations correctly when routed to Sibelius through a sequencer. I tested pp-ff etc., staccatos, crescendos, marcatos, arpeggios, up bow/down bow, glissando, and they all worked. Only the pizzicatos didn't work, but support for that is promised in a future version of Synful. I did not notice any difference to a slur and non slur, not on string sounds at least, but that may be because they play legato by default. I was rather surprised that the articulations really worked.

In my opinion Synful sounds a lot better than any sound expansion for Sibelius, such as Kontakt Player or GPO (I listened to their sample clips and they really sounded like midi with slightly altered sounds!) whereas Synful beats good sample libraries in some aspects (although the brass suck, but that's also promised to improve in a future version). Now that I found out that Synful interprets the articulations, I'd never spend a few 100€ on Sibelius sound expansions. Rather, I'd pay the 400€ for Synful, which is useful for other things than just notation playback.

[MaestroX]

Thanks crimson, I'll have to check out Synful Orchestra. I've been hearing alot about it but never really checked it out.

Do you need any other program to route it to Sibelius?

[crimson]

Synful only works as a VSTi plugin, so you need a VST host to run it, such as Cubase. You'll also need virtual midi router software. I use the freely downloadable Midi Yoke for that. Getting Sibelius to play Synful through Midi Yoke and Cubase seems a bit tricky at first but it's ok when you get the hang of it. I can post the instructions if you need them (I use Cubase SX3).

By the way, you can download a free trial version of Synful from their site. It's fully functional, you can even compose complete pieces with the demo as there are no restrictions. I think the demo period was a month or three weeks, after which it stops working if not registered. And when you register, you don't need to download any additional stuff as the demo already has everything needed. I may sound enthusiastic, but I have been really happy with Synful so far.

Do you remember my piece Autumn Leaves? I used Synful for the violin, and I didn't have to tweak any samples except for adding diminuendos by editing the midi in Cubase (but I could have done that already in Sibelius by naturally adding a decrescendo mark). Synful really is a software synth, so it's not so much a wonder that it can interpret Sibelius notation through midi. I just didn't realize that before.

[MidiWorld]

I have to listen to and edit a lot of GM files. Tried all kinds of soft synths but I still prefer and recommend using a dedicated sound module. The Roland SondCanvas family of modules sound pretty good. I currently use the Roland SC-880 for most of my GM/GS files. It has 2 ports, 32 channels so I can do large orchestral pieces without any problems. Having a dedicated GM sound module saves me a lot of time, soft synths are still very time consuming to set up, the module is pretty much "plug-and-play" with a well-balanced sound set. Once I'm done with sequencing and editing, and want to record the piece in audio, then I abandon General MIDI and dig into the sample libraries.

[MaestroX]

Thanks for the info MidiWorld

I've been looking everywhere on the internet for one of these dedicated GM sound modules but can't seem to find the model you describe. Could you provide a link to one?

Apologies for the late reply

[twiztedpixel]

Has anyone out here tried Wingroove ?, this is a nifty player that has a pretty decent sound engine, and it plays all MIDI files. All is requires on the client machine is WAVE output.

Just google for it, download it and try it out.

[mducharme]

I recommend Sonivox MUSE

http://www.sonivoxmi.com/ProductDeta...ualInstruments

It's expensive but has a 4GB GM bank plus 34GB other samples. It covers all the bases (orchestral, pop, ethnic, etc).