On 30 Jul 2005 at 8:40, Brad Beyenhof wrote: > On 30/07/05, dhbailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I am still waiting to be shown why GPO/Kontakt playback is superior. > > A kind member of this list has offered to work on a file of mine to > > show me how to get improved playback via GPO. I am eager to see > > what the result is. > > Jari has just put up a "Sound Comparisons Page" on his website: > http://finaletips.nu/fin2006review/soundtech.php
Kudos to Jari for doing this, and thanks to you, Brad, for bringing it to our attention It clearly shows that the Finale soundfont is inferior to GPO, but I find the Finale GPO soundset to be not all that great. The strings are pretty wonderful, yes, but the winds are just not good, it seems to me. The flute and oboe sound like the corresponding stops on a 19th-century organ instead of like the real instruments (there's no audible attack). The full GPO winds are vastly superior. But the strings used in the full GPO sample seem to me to be weak, and larded over with extra reverb. Now, maybe it's my PC speakers, but the presence of the Finale GPO strings sounds quite a lot better (mostly) than the full GPO strings. The only exception is for the ends of phrases, where the full GPO strings are much more musical. Again, it seems to me like GPO strings are wonderful and everything else is pretty mediocre. While I applaud the effort to improve default playback in Finale: 1. I think it's a mistake to provide that improvement by tying Finale to a particular technology, one that requires Finale to know the insides of the technology chosen, instead of treating it like a black box with an interface like every equivalent technology. 2. I also think it's a mistake to choose a technology that is so resource-intensive as to not even run on a lot of the hardware out there that is running current versions of Finale just fine. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
