Phil Taylor wrote:
Yes I am using Quicktime 6.0.2.Are you using Quicktime 6.0.2? If not, update. It seems to solve all the sound problems.
The application itself is actually quite good, but the sound samples they introduced in version 5 really sucks!
It's an old well-known problem to all electronic musicians that hardware and software manufacturers regard string ensemble sounds as something that should only be used for long, drawn-out notes in the background. No attack whatsoever, and the volume takes ages to build. The common solution to this problem is to mix in some solo string sounds. Apparently Apple doesn't like this kind of hacks, so the solo string sounds in QuickTime are just as bad in that respect as common string ensemble sounds (and their string ensemble sounds are of course worse than you can possibly imagine). They even remembered to destroy the "secret" solo string sound (the fiddle)! There simply is no way you can have a fast moving strings line within an ensemble with QuickTime 6. No matter how loud you set it, it'll inevitably drown, simply because the volume hasn't got time to build before the note is ended.
Then there's the clarinet sound for the Norwegian arrangments, of course. Sounds like it comes from a cheap mid 80s Casio keyboard. It took me only half an hour to build a more realistic clarinet sound from scratch on my battered old DX7.
The obvious solution, sound fonts, is rather cumbersome and doesn't solve this particular problem any way. What matters isn't what I hear, but what my visitors hear. I can't just ask them to just download and install a cuple of megabytes of sound fonts to play the midis at Musica Viva.
Even the old QuickTime 1 I use on my old LC is better. Sounds tacky, and you can forget everything about realism, but at least it works!
One of the great things about QuickTime as a midi player, is that it established a common platform for how the midi samples sounds. It doesn't cost a dime and you can use it to play midis on most any computer you like with more or less the same results. Unortunately, with QuickTime 5 Apple blew it big time :-(
(And congratulations on Musica Viva's survival too!)
Thanks :-)
Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
