Hi there......I ve been using NWC for many years now and im really a pro when it comes to composing and notation but im afraid im not really that good when it comes to sounds......i have a 4 year old computer pentium 4 with windows xp and an on board soundcard.....when i download midi they sound fine but when i create them they sound awful..my soundcard has midi mapper using microsoft GS wavetable......i was recommended the creative platinum champion series for better realistic sounds...card slot is PCI...do you think this will work? Thanking you in advance
What soundcard do you have installed now?
Beware - Some Creative products won't use soundfonts.
Their Extreme Audio card does NOT support soundfonts.
The low end of the range Extreme Gamer DOES!
Check out the spec http://tinyurl.com/35488y (http://tinyurl.com/35488y)
If your main interest is MIDI and NWC playback I can recommend the Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer loaded with a good soundfont.
Creating a good sounding MIDI file takes more effort than just entering notes in a score.
If you can get a copy of "Handbook of MIDI Sequencing" by Dave Clackett; PC Publishing - you can learn a lot from that.
Here is sample mp3 file recorded direct from the output from the Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer soundcard using the Chaos 8Mb soundfont.
http://tinyurl.com/2rq3rh/SolidBlue.mp3 (http://tinyurl.com/2rq3rh/SolidBlue.mp3)
(May not be your type of music)!!
If you want to discuss MIDI file creation send me an Email or reply here.
Barry Graham
Melbourne, Australia
A sound solution that has worked well for my daughter is Creative's Live! standalone soundcard. Plugs into the USB port. But since you state that downloaded MIDI sounds fine but yours sounds awful, I suspect the problem isn't actually in the soundcard. There may be some hints we can offer you if you describe your practices for creating MIDI files.
....and we need to make sure that you are actually listening to downloaded MIDI files, not downloaded MP3, WAV, or similar "real sound" files. Not everything that plays on a computer is MIDI.
Cheers,
Bill
Since you are running XP (please, oh please, I beg you, don't "upgrade" to Vista!) I am sure Lawrie will chime right in with me in reccommending the Yamaha S-YXG 50 software synthesizer. Since Yamaha discontinued it, it can be found free on a number of sites with a Google search. It is worth ten times the $45 I paid for it shortly before Yamaha discontinued it. On my computer, a 2G Celeron Dell 378M RAM, it hardly loads the processor or memory and with virtually zero latency (~8ms) playback. The best instrument sounds I have heard from any hardware or software synth or soundcard or soundfonts costing less than $300! A search on this board will likely turn up several download sites, though they may have changed since those threads were current.
I wholeheartedly concur - vista is a DOWNgrade.
Yup ;)
Very nice.
The only problem is the volume level of some parts.
Brass are much louder than the solo sax.
But that's an old story: changing output device changes the relative volume levels...
By the way: who is the composer?
Barry, I too like Solid Blue. Your soundfonts are better than mine. Nice chart - it could be fun to work up.