> Bleah. It's not 1989 anymore. Use synths for synths, but for the love of > music, don't use a synth to try to simulate a banjo. A digital simulation of > a banjo is bad enough. If we did come up with such a thing, people > (especially ignorant people, who have no clue what's what, or how anything > works) will just come up with reviews that "Rosegarden sounds really bad." >
Well, this is a totally different problem. One thing is helping the user to Just Make The Bloody Thing Sound and another one showing the user that you can make Breathtaking Music with RG and some ot the freely available synths and samples. If you want to provide the user with a means of easily test the midi portion of RG, I guess it might make sense to give her directions on how to install fluidsynth, the fluid dssi, a small but complete GM soundfont, no matter how crappy, and some sample RG projects that play to the strengths of that particular soundfont. As for making RG sound great, well, this depends on every user's standards. I mean, it is cool that you are happy with your SC55, it is/was a nice piece of gear and, if you want another one I will be happy to sell you mine at a reasonable price, but if you consider the "jazz lagoon" demo a satisfying imitation of a real bigband, well, your standards and mine are different. Other people are perfectly happy with the sound quality of a cellphone ringtone. Go figure. Like it or not, the Linux platform is not yet ready for, let's say, Holywood-ish orchestral music, mainly because of the lack of free sample libraries (free as in "some dozen nice and highly skilled people took the awfully expensive equipment necessary and made the hard job and don't mind not getting paid for it or got the money from some generous sponsor"). Some people are converting the University of Iowa samples to sf2 format in sf2midi.com and other sites like it, so that could be a beginning. There is also the Fluid R3 soundfont, but I am not sure of its legal status as redistribution is concerned. This is some music I am composing for the demo of a game, in this case the soundtrack of a transition videoclip. It is not finished yet, but you can get the idea. 100% Linux (no RG, sorry) plus 6/7 different soundfonts downloaded from sf2midi.com which I am not sure I can use legally, so if this game makes it to distribution I will have to buy some commercial sound banks and remaster it. http://luisgarrido.info/tmp/intro_movie06.ogg The potential is there, but the tools are still rudimentary. Making RG Just Work would be a Big Step Forward. But for making professional quality music with it you need also good synths, samplers, sample libraries, sample library editors, readily usable effects with a good set of presets... (some music skills and talent may come handy, too). Summarizing, the statement "RG sounds really bad" is dependant on what you compare it to and you need much more than RG to make it sound "really good". Cheers, Luis
