best midi playback device

2002-05-19 02:56 am

Anyone know whats the best midi playback device to get that sounds like real band, and string instruments?

Re: best midi playback device

Reply #1 – 2002-05-19 11:23 pm

By "playback device" I assume you mean the software interface that read the MIDI program. Examples would be Windows Media Player, Quicktime, WinAmp, et., etc., etc.

The quality of sound depends upon the "instument definitions" that can be accessed by the MIDI player. This depends both on software and hardware. Elementary systems (such as mine) have a bare-bottoms general MIDI sound card that sounds rather bogus for most intruments. I cannot replace it, but I can use a MIDI player that calls intrument definitions from a software synthesizer better than the one that came with my computer, or a MIDI player that calls digitized real instrument sounds. If I had a replaceable sound card, I could installed hardware that allowed "sount font" instrument definitions to be installed by the user. These interact directly with the hardware.

My point: The ultimate sound is not always determined by the software user interface that you use to open the MIDI file.

Your question is discussed in many threads on this forum. I haven't followed them myself (for technical reasons), but use the forum search facility to find keywords: "MIDI", "sound blaster", "sound font", "hammersound", "yamaha synthesizer", "DX MIDI", and several others.