On 6 Apr 2006 at 10:03, Eric Dannewitz wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > On 6 Apr 2006 at 9:28, Eric Dannewitz wrote: > > > >> David W. Fenton wrote: > >> > >>> I am very anti-iTunes for anything other than as a media player > >>> (which I use it for). I won't use it for anything else because I > >>> don't like the choices that have been made for me. For MIDI-to-WAV > >>> conversion it's useless, since it uses the horrid QT instruments. > >>> > >> This is true about Quicktime Instruments, but, seriously, way would > >> you render a Midi using it? > > > > The point is that I *wouldn't*, but it's the only option. That's why > > I have a separate program that allows me to capture the output of > > any of the MIDI synthesizers on my system (soft or hard). > > > No it's not. There are a number of ways to convert a Midi to a Wave > NOT using Quicktime.
I cannot find any such method. In any event, the best synthesizer on my system is my soundcard, and iTunes can't capture its output, so I can't use iTunes for this purpose. > > From my point of view, a soundfont and a sample are the same thing > > -- you're taking a synthesizer and loading a selection of sounds > > into it, rather than being stuck with the ones it came with. This > > can be done either in software or in hardware. If it were done in > > hardware, it would make the system much more efficient. If GPO's > > instruments could be offloaded to a separate DSP on a soundcard, > > you'd not have the awful problems that occur with loading up too > > many of them at a time. > > > Synthesizer is a Synthesizer, not a sample player. Two different > things. Well, then lets call the synthesizer on my soundcard a sample player, one that is hard-wired to the samples in that soundcard's ROM. > > I don't distinguish between soundfonts and samples. > > Which is the problem. They are two different things. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundfont "akin to sampling". Akin is not > the SAME as sampling. GPO and others have extensive samples of > instruments in different ranges, dynamics, etc. Soundfonts do not have > all this detail. If the soundfont was produced from samples, it *is* the same thing. The technical differences don't matter to me because the issue for me is offloading the processing to a dedicated card rather than bogging down the system's CPU and RAM with the same processing. > > Well, I've never used any. I don't know the terminology. All I meant > > was that you're loading your instrument sounds from data stored in > > files, rather than hard-encoded into a particular soft synth or ROM > > on a soundcard. > > Which is what a sample player does. But it is cheaper to dedicate a > separate computer to doing playback. Cause, basically, you are trying > to load as much stuff in memory and/or access it from a disk to allow > for seamless playback. I don't see how a card is going to help with > that, as it's really a memory/cpu thing. Unless you are proposing some > sort of card that holds its own storage medium, and processor to allow > you to upload and store all the samples. Oh, puh-leaze. For years Creative has sold $100 soundcards that do exactly this. > For me, since I work with this stuff for a living, I dedicated a whole > computer to do it. I can easily run 30+ instruments on my Pentium 4 > machine, and they sound great. Well, I *don't* do it for a living. A $100 hardware device that could load and play samples would be much better for my needs. Which was my whole point all along, that I think it's a mistake that the industry has moved away from that model. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
