I would like to hear your opinions for the best sounding GM-VSTi for most of the GM-sounds: OmniSynth, HyperCanvas, a special GM-soundfont (used in a sampler), or some other VSTi?

Thanks

AndreasEhrhardt wrote:

I would like to hear your opinions for the best sounding GM-VSTi for most of the GM-sounds: OmniSynth, HyperCanvas, a special GM-soundfont (used in a sampler), or some other VSTi? Thanks

Omnisynth by far

Haven't had too much experience yet. (I own a MU100R, don't need to. ) But I think the Japanese Synth1 has a very good array of bright and sassy GM voices on it.

Not sure if it's the whole 128 voice map, but many voices work well alongside my MU?

OmniSynth again.

AndreasEhrhardt wrote:

I would like to hear your opinions for the best sounding GM-VSTi for most of the GM-sounds: OmniSynth, HyperCanvas, a special GM-soundfont (used in a sampler), or some other VSTi? Thanks

Erm.... Universal Sound Module?

I like the Fluid 3 soundfont for GM sounds - haven't compared it to Omnisynth though as I don't have that - it would be interesting to hear from someone who has.

Proteus 2 is good as well - though strictly speaking it has more than just GM sounds. Generally I use the EXS sampler as my basic instrument to play these.

Both soundfonts are pretty large (<120 meg)

On the whole though I prefer to use individual soundfonts for specific purposes rather than one general one.

Omnisynth all the way baby

Definitely OmniSynth

Gordon

I like OmniSynth for the sounds, but it's lacking in some pure GM capabilities due to the ST LE engine. For instance, I have a lot of old tracks archived that were made for the Kawai GMega, and they require a lot of massaging to get them "translated" right (particularly with respect to ST LE being only 4 channels: the GMega handled 32! (2 Ins)).

So if I'm listening to this old material on the fly, or canned GM songs from the net, I use the Eridol VSC that came with SONAR. Otherwise, I use OmniSynth if I'm writing from scratch and want "realistic sounds" (very cool when played in layered mode).

- m

omnisynth

Omnisynth.

In defense of Universal Synth it's the most efficient plug I've seen. On a 32 track tune it doesn't get to 10% on a Athlon XP1700+.
Did I just say that?

there you go andreas......omnisynth it is

another one here for omni synth

AndreasEhrhardt wrote:

I would like to hear your opinions for the best sounding GM-VSTi

I justed started playing with OmniSynth and I'm very disappointed. I tried to make some acoustic sounding music. The clarinet, flute, recorder I have no idea what instrument was sampled, but it was not a clarinet, flute, and recorder. The flute has a switch over between two samples that is so abrupt, it sounds like two completely different instruments.

The harp also disapointed me: it sounds like one sample stretched all the way. I'm really missing those sonorous lows of a concert harp. This sounds just too thin.

Several samples have their attack squeezed off in a very unnatural way. Hello!? Sampletank has a filter that can remove the attack just fine; if you remove it from the basic sample it's gone and nothing's gonna bring it back.

Right now I'm using the Edirol Virtual Sound Canvas as much as OmniSynth; it's 1/3 the price and a fraction of the memory.

Victor.

As much as I respect Dave and Sonic Reality, I would have to agree with Eijkhout regarding GM and OmniSynth. Yes, we all know that the GM standard is old and decrepid these days, but if you truly desire that sound with at least some level of authenticity, then OmniSynth is a big disappointment for me as well. It may have 600+mb of samples, but quantity alone does not necessarily equate to quality. Roland are masters at efficiency in this regard. Take a now old Roland JV-35 keyboard, which probably only had about 4-8mb of raw samples and listen to it's GM sound set sometime. It blows everything else away. Super clean, well balanced sound. Seamless keyboard splits and sample loops and good quality sample data. Fits wonderfully in a mix. One of the best and usable harpsichord sounds I've heard. A tribute to Roland and their sound engineers (heck, possibly even Mr. Persing).

The closest to this I've heard in software is Edirol's HyperCanvas. While not as good as Roland's hardware units, it works far better as a GM module than OmniSynth. I would rather look at OmniSynth as just another SR sound library with some good, usable sounds, but I'd never look to it for good GM reproduction. And I'm definitely in agreement that it's keyboard (especially harpsichord), strings and woodwind sounds are startlingly mediocre. Most of it's other sound groups are not very good either, which is puzzling because it doesn't seem to reflect the high level of quality that I observe in Sonic Synth at all.

Bottom line IMHO... HyperCanvas all the way. They even make a DXi version for Sonar users.

-Tronam

I remember trying an experiment with omnisynth where i would take midi files of tv themes and hear how well it could do it. Law and Order omnisynth version is actually convincingly good(and that does include the clarinet patch which was okay not great but it filled in the part fine). Other instruments used for that theme are the famous 80's fm ep and the timpani which Osynth does well.

in all fairness brass/wind sounds are very hard to do and this is not what omnisynth is intended for - you are buying a range of sounds. Not to mention that for 130 bucks(is it 130 these days?) you are not going to get the best of everything(and SR really delivers in the many other areas than horns/winds) You need a dedicated library for that but if you like what SR does than I suggest you take a gander at the new sonic synth bonus disk it has beautiful orchestral and flute sounds so it is safe to say SR is improving greatly in this field of the soundware business.

I think the greatest moments for me in Omnisynth are the pianos/rhodes/organs/chromatic - and that is very important!

The key here is whether someone wants to adhere to 10 year old instruments or make realistic GM files. In it's day Roland was certainly at the top of the heap but as far as quality and reality go I respectfully disagree with Eijkhout's statements about patch quality issues.

When the XP-50 came out with a better quality sample set that did not fit the GM specification 100% similar arguments were made including how the better sample set didn't sound as good which struck me as absurd.

The HyperCanvas may be the ticket for some, but the Virtual Sound Canvas doesn't hold a candle to the HyperCanvas let alone Omnisynth.

So is no-one using soundfonts any more? Come on - someone must have tried Fluid 3 or Proteus 2?

And I thought Hypercanvas was the same as VSC but with a flashier interface - whats the difference?

Yeah Omnisynth has samples from SonicSynth, that's why it is real good.. But check out the free soundfonts out there.. Some of them have excellent samples eg.. http://realmidi.virtualave.net/ and http://www.personalcopy.com/sfarkfonts1.htm

Some pretty cool gm's in there too.

Thank you all for your replies.

Summarizing, there is a majority for Omnisynth and a minority for Hypercanvas or VSC. If I look to the kvr ratings, Omni is rated much higher than HC or VSC. And concerning CPU and RAM, both have their advantage in one field and disadvantage in the other. I ordered Omni one week ago but didn´t get it yet.

aMUSEd wrote:

So is no-one using soundfonts any more? Come on - someone must have tried Fluid 3 or Proteus 2? ...

I have Fluid 2 and it´s really a good (perhaps the best free) GM soundfont. I normally use soundfonts (I have more than 5 GB of them ) loaded into the SBLive or VSampler or Jeskola XS-1. Now I´m very interested if the sounds of Omnisynth are really sounding natural and if they are better than my best GM soundfonts (I will tell you my opinion). But it´s clear, that in many cases GM sounds are only a first and easy attempt and that individual sounds often are better for refining a song.

AndreasEhrhardt wrote:

I have Fluid 2 and it´s really a good (perhaps the best free) GM soundfont. I normally use soundfonts (I have more than 5 GB of them ) loaded into the SBLive or VSampler or Jeskola XS-1. Now I´m very interested if the sounds of Omnisynth are really sounding natural and if they are better than my best GM soundfonts (I will tell you my opinion). But it´s clear, that in many cases GM sounds are only a first and easy attempt and that individual sounds often are better for refining a song.

Yes - I too would be interested to see if Omnisynth is better than these large soundfonts.

Do you think Fluid 2 is better than Fluid 3 or have you just not tried version 3 yet? Have you tried Proteus?

I agree entirely that the best approach is to use individual fonts for particular purposes and thats normally what I do too - but its useful to have a collection for somethings.

I've just downloaded Personal Copy and Unison sf2's to try them so thanks for the link Audiowhore.

So far I have resisted buying a ROMpler because I have not been convinced of the advantages of this over a good collection of soundfonts or samples and the right sampler/player - I will keep an open mind though.

Mr. Tunes © wrote:

I think the greatest moments for me in Omnisynth are the pianos/rhodes/organs/chromatic - and that is very important!

Yeah, but how many modules and whatever are there with this keyboard stuff? They outnumber the orchestral woodwinds by thousands to one. I was hoping to get those from OmniSynth.

Victor.

Here's my honest opinion about it FWIW. I think OmniSynth kicks butt (oh really? If 'e doesn't say so 'im self!). For most of the sounds it is more realistic than you normally find in a GM set and more on par with the quality you'd find on a $200. sample library (and add up each category of library to get that variety and you just saved yourself about $1,000-2,000 if you were to make your own GM set pooling from different sample libraries... so that's why we made it because we DO make those kind of sample libraries).

I think the orchestral sounds are quite good with the exception of a few- the flute, recorder, ens brass and harpsichord are extremely average. I mean, they are as good as some other GM modules and perhaps even better than some really crappy ones but they're nothing to write home about IMO. That's unfortunate because at the time I didn't have those 4 instruments prepared to the level I do now. So, when we made the bonus disc for Sonic Synth we finally added those sounds into the picture because it was frustrating for me to know this and to hear that this was practically the only sound complaint about Sonic Synth (now there doesn't seem to be too many which makes me feel like we really achieved an aesthetic level of satisfaction for the customer and we're proud of it). I'd like to do the same for the OmniSynth too though. But, we don't have any kind of bonus disc for Omni.

However, since we decided to make the bonus Sonic Synth disc a separate purchasable item on www.esoundz.com for $49. and not make people prove they own Sonic Synth to get it (we were going to but... one could also just buy it as a cheap taste of Sonic Synth on it's own which is nice- although they would have to have some kind of Sampletank to play it of course as it doesn't come with one- just sound content). But, I'll even do one up on that to make this a better situation... we'll do an OmniSynth with the bonus disc bundle for $149. together. If anyone bought Omni semi-recently (including Andreas- please email synthdan to make sure it went to the right place btw) can also just get the bonus disc added onto it for the different (so $20. more and you'll have better flutes, recorder, harpsi and brass.... and that's not to mention some acoustic I map kits, orchestral combis, loads of pads, piano stacks and other cool stuff- about 600 megs worth for that $20 so don't say we're not nice!).

The reason we'd be willing to do that is because it just makes sense. I don't know how long we can offer that though but let's say for the next few months at least. If I could go back in time I would have put these 4 in the set though. Maybe we'll make an update at some point but it would cost the same as this bonus disc offer so... you might as well get the OTHER 500 megs of stuff too.

One more thing: The only thing holding OmniSynth and even OmniSoundz back from being the ultimate GM module is the fact that Sampletank doesn't accept program changes and neither do a lot of other software samplers. This is a major bummer because otherwise if it had that it would read SMF and assign the tracks to the GM list patches. That is the one advantage the VSC has IMO. Although, it's easy enough to just replace even the internal GM set that will auto channel in your song since Omni is obviously numbered correctly to GM. Still... this annoys me that Reason, ST, Kontakt and a few others don't just accept program changes. HALion does though and maybe EXSmk2 (have to check on that one). So, OmniSoundz for those that don't know is the same GM set as OmniSynth but it is in EXS24, HALion, Kontakt (now it is), Reason NNXT (now XT before it was just NN19) and Samplecell/Unity.

That's all from me. Hope that info helps.

I can vouche that the harpsichord from the bonus disk is worth writing home about

For the way I work, the Omnisynth/SonicSynth/BonusDisk combination makes the *ultimate* GM module.

The key tool for me is the Search function on SampleTank. Using the search function, I can locate in an instant all the acoustic bass sounds, or jazz guitar sounds, or flutes, etc. and plug them into a GM midi file. With this combination, I have a seemingly endless group of instruments to work with. For fun I take a basic midi file and rework it using lots of different sounding instruments on SonicSynth. For instance, take an old country tune and use "brain damage" for the guitar part. Loads of fun!

I suppose my vote for a GM module would be cast for the OmniSynth. But if you want the ultimate GM module plus much, much more - IMHO - grab the SonicSynth.

That's a good way to work Gentleharp. We all know the the GM standard is a little unsuual in places to... like if I had to choose 128 instruments on a desert island I'd gladly trade a bird tweet or "goblins" in for a 12 string or that Brain Damage patch. Having OmniSynth and Sonic Synth with the bonus disc let's you use the GM numbered -easy to find- meat & potatoes stuff but when GM becomes a little generic and limited you dip into Sonic Synth's massive patch list for some variation. Then of course, you can expand further out into other plug-ins as well if you wanted to. Starting from Omni can get work done really fast in the beginning because it's all there so neatly organized. I was stuck in a pinch to find a few sounds working on something and I realized "Well, there's an electric grand and a musical box in the GM listing so I'll just use OmniSoundz". That got me through a quick gig I was doing fast and I realized the value of having a higher quality GM set.

Realistically, those VSC things aren't even as good as their XV sound modules (because if they were... would anyone buy the modules still? Ok, the two people out there that program it would). Since Omni and Sonic have better quality samples than hardware modules it's coming from a whole different angle. Honestly, the only other "Pro" GM product I have seen is the one done for Giga from Connexant (sp?). It would be interesting to compare those two since it's even larger in size than Omni. I have heard reports though that it's not as good as Omni from several people though. I sort of wish I had it so I could see for myself but... it's still just for Giga anyway and between OmniSynth and OmniSoundz we are supporting nearly all of the popular software samplers.

Still, sounds are subjective so a "standard sound list" by nature is sort of odd... but it's a good universal tool that one shouldn't lose sight of either... especially for having some kind of sound to midi.

I think much of this simply comes down to what you would consider GM compatibility. When people are looking for this, is it simply the way the sounds are organized that they like or are they truly looking for GM accuracy? With the latter, nothing matches a true Roland sound module in my opinion. They created the standard and produced the best core GM sample sets as far as I'm concerned. But this is coming from the perspective of GM consistency and accuracy. This is where HyperCanvas fits the bill and is the closest at reproducing that. It still doesn't compare to a Roland hardware unit, but at least it acts like one for the most part.

If you are simply looking for a great selection of high quality sounds that are intelligently organized and contain a wide variety of timbres, then Sonic Synth or possibly the new Sonic Station is a beautiful way to go. You could drown in the number usable, great sounds in these collections. No offense to Dave as he's a brilliant sound designer, but when compared to Sonic Synth (and the great bonus disc), OmniSynth seems rather limited and dull in comparison. Both sample quality and key zone splits have been frequently disappointing, aside from some of the drums and percussive sounds. Spend the extra money and go for the real deal. You'll be glad that you did.

-Tronam

aMUSEd wrote:

Do you think Fluid 2 is better than Fluid 3 or have you just not tried version 3 yet? Have you tried Proteus? So far I have resisted buying a ROMpler because I have not been convinced of the advantages of this over a good collection of soundfonts or samples and the right sampler/player - I will keep an open mind though.

aMUSEd, sorry for answering so late (time problem). I only have Fluid 2, so I can´t compare it to Fluid 3. Proteus is a good sounding bank, but it isn´t a complete GM soundbank.

Btw., two very good links for free soundfonts are www.thesoundsite.net and www.hammersound.net.

I also have resisted till today buying a ROMpler because of my huge collection of soundfonts and samples, and I hope that it´ll be worth the price of it because of a better sound quality of the GM instruments.

Squids wrote:

... we'll do an OmniSynth with the bonus disc bundle for $149 together. If anyone bought Omni semi-recently (including Andreas- please email synthdan to make sure it went to the right place btw) can also just get the bonus disc added onto it for the different (so $20. more and you'll have better flutes, recorder, harpsi and brass.... and that's not to mention some acoustic I map kits, orchestral combis, loads of pads, piano stacks and other cool stuff- about 600 megs worth for that $20 so don't say we're not nice!).

Squids, you are really very nice , thank you for that offer . But for me, unfortunately, that offer doesn´t make sense, because the shipping costs to Germany are also between 20 and 30$, so, this bonus disk would effectively cost between 40 and 50$ for me.

Quote:

Still... this annoys me that Reason, ST, Kontakt and a few others don't just . HALion does though and maybe EXSmk2 (have to check on that one).

VSampler 2.75 do accept program changes, as far as I know, but I could be wrong.

Squids wrote:

Honestly, the only other "Pro" GM product I have seen is the one done for Giga from Connexant (sp?). It would be interesting to compare those two since it's even larger in size than Omni.

Squids, there are also some Pro GM-SF2 libraries on the market (but I don´t own them, so I can´t compare). I think some of them are also very good.

Where can you get Fluid 2/3 - I haven't heard of this before.

Look at my links above.

OK, I've downloaded fluid - How do I convert a sfpack to a sf2?

OK, sorted. I like the french horns, oboe, clarinet. Violas aren't bad. Overall good, but grainy sounding. Some reverb might sort that out.

I have been trying out some of the soundfonts from the personalcopy.com site - personalcopy.sf2 itself is really good and has some very natural sounds. Unison sounded off key to me - especially the piano's and guitars. It was also quite tinny. However my favourite on the site is the Realfont 2.1 - it has some really warm, natural sounds, especially the guitars and the basses and Piano are lovely. Some of the other sounds are a bit weaker than the personalcopy font though - eg the strings and the flute sound artificial to me.