Forte OR Cantabile??

[PFozz]

As mentioned in another thread, it's difficult to hierarchically sort live-oriented VST hosts.

Musicians have different needs and priorities. Some are common, especially stability and I'm sure this one is the top priority of the developers we are.

IMHO, it would be a wrong move to get a big application featuring everything you can find in Cantabile, Forte and BloXpander. A live oriented application should remain fast and easy to use, as is your favorite instrument once the beast tamed. It also has to provide the features you need on stage, and all these features can't be thought as a standard.

That's why some musicians love Cantabile while some others love Forte or BloXpander. I'm glad to know that some BloXpander fans also love Cantabile or Forte (which is a real fact). I personally love all my guitars and e-drums things. Some may say it's different when it comes to choose a piece of software but I don't think so.

Never will I claim BloXpander is better than Forte or Cantabile. It's just different. Some will love it and some will hate it. It's not a problem to me. BloXpander has been formerly thought to meet my own requirements on stage (the interface and handling of multi-outputs and multi-inputs are a part of them, as is the way BloXpander is controllable via MIDI). Now, BloXpander users request some features and I do my best to implement them without breaking the original "spirit". The recent updates include features requested by users.

Anyway, it would be great to have someone who loves the three products writing a comparative chart so you can choose one (or more ^^) depending on your needs.

I won't hesitate to promote Cantabile, Forte or another one if I feel like one of them is obviously a better answer to the needs of a musician looking for a live-oriented host.

Otherwise, BloXpander has been released some weeks ago and you are right about the forum and videos. Well… my forum is very young and I would be shy myself in front of such an empty forum. Most of the feedback arrives in my email box or on other forums, but you are welcome on my own forum. You can be sure I will reply to any message.

Finally I sincerly wish all the best to the Cantabile and Forte teams.

Kind regards,
PFozz

[TiUser]

Thank you for adding these wise words.

I can't agree more - even Cantabile is my personal favorite.

If I'd asked by a newbie I always tell you have to find out if a host provides what you need. So I recommend trying Cantabile Demos for that purpose - or getting free "Lite" which is a no brainer and must have IMHO.

I haven't dived much into BloExpander so my short impression might be misleading - anyway it's good to know that there are alternatives.

To be honest, I really liked the very different visual approach of BloExpander...

I think there is a larger variety of live tools compared to DAW's which is unfortunately harder to get an overview.

[AnalogGuy1]

+1 for Cantabile over Forte here (and no experience with BloXpander for better or worse). For me it was the simplicity of having a live host with built in mp3 and midi players with easily midi mapped on/off/volume controls. I think it is THE solution for backing track playing if you're using VSTi's anyway.

But that said, I have licenses for both and they both wored well for me. Both Forte's and Cantabile's developers are very responsive to questions.
I switched to Cantabile because of the integrated midi/mp3 player support.

[krraqk]

What about Kore (soft version)?

After try Cantabile I prefer Kore best, mainly because the better signal route and concept workflow where I find Cantabile a bit obscure and crippled, at least not very intuitive for me.

In the other side Kore lacks multi core and x64 support.

Anyone tried Kore for live use and can compare/opine?

[TiUser]

I personally tried Kore demo twice. It's performance didn't appeal me twice...

Operation wise Cantabile ranges in between a modular host and a more static mixer type host. The mixer type design my be the simplest to understand. But everyone has to find the solution that meets his imaginations best.

Concerning myself, using VST's as live instruments was always a way quirky - regardless of the host type... there is simply no perfect and yet simple solution

[bburtin]

I tried the Kore2 software edition before discovering Cantabile, and ended up selling it. My reaction was that it's much more effective as a reasonably-priced sound library than it is as a performance host/synth. I did a writeup of my experiences here:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3612977

[zl3d]

Hi gents,

Do you also have such issue when switching between songs in setlist? The mute and bypass settings always are messed up! I'm using the latest build (2056). This is getting me very annonying =[

[TiUser]

Probably this would be better put in a different thread, but anyway...

Just for curiosity, how is your setting in "Options" -> "Setlists" -> "save modified sessions"?

Maybe there is still a bug but probably you can influence this when choosing "no" here?

[zl3d]

Hi!

Yes, you are right TiUser... I should have posted it in another thread sorry hehe

I've it set to NO.. Issue is still present =O(

Thanks.

[Mixtremist]

Cantabile or Forte?? Given the apparent demise of the developer, it looks like Forte wins! Too bad, Cantabile looks like a great program. But, with no support (which means no bug fixes or improvements, or even questions answered), it just doesn't look like a wise purchase.

Sad, really..........

[TiUser]

At the moment I totally agree.

It's about three months now from the latest update. For the same time there wasn't any official news or comments. Only info around is that a VSTi version of Cantabile is in progress. But there is no news about this too... nor here neither on Cantabile website.

However many companies seem to be in economical difficulties and we may not always know. To my understanding Cantabile is not really a commercial project in terms of money. So I'm a bit more forgiving but I understand that this situation may be no option for full professional users.

Just see that OpenLabs is bankrupt... They've just released their own new Riff host and I really didn't expect this news.

Forte is around for many years - true. It may be a solid workhorse but to me it looks dated as well.

At the moment my personal interest replacing keyboards by pc software solutions for performance decreases a lot. VSTi technology has a lot of advantages for the production style people. In contrast I think it's too much effort for "normal" players - i.e. a lot of wasted time sorting out technical issues, never being sure if the system works finally stable enough.

Since the Motif XF with sample flash memory has been announced these days and taking into regard that one of my concerns with software solutions is the non instant sound changes this might be what I've been waiting for... I am fed up of all the sessions with configuration, tweaking and finally loading delay that has taken a lot of the spontaneous fun from me in playing music.

[JeffB]

Typically I only swapped from Forte to Cantabile a few months back!

C'est la vie!!

[bburtin]

Typically I only swapped from Forte to Cantabile a few months back!

You're not alone. I just switched too. Luckily Cantabile is stable and usable in its current state, except for a couple of minor feature requests that I filed. So I'm mostly happy. It's too bad that we're in such a niche market. There aren't many of us who use softsynths live, so there's not much money to be made, and little incentive for R&D.

Hopefully the day will come where we have a reasonably-priced hardware synth that I can use for piano, organ, synthesis, and sampling, and we can stop dealing with all this plugin silliness. Some of the Kurzweil and stuff and the Nord Stage look promising, but the price point is insane. Oh well. Give it another couple of years and we'll get there. Who knows, maybe the next killer synth will be an iPad.

Boris

[krraqk]

In contrast I think it's too much effort for "normal" players - i.e. a lot of wasted time sorting out technical issues, never being sure if the system works finally stable enough.

Couldnt agree more...

Im yet trying to decide to do the cantabile route (my demo time expired and was having some crashes with cantabile so it was not clear to me). Now that apparent inactivity of the developer is aggravating very much my doubts.

He is not even responding support emails?

At this time in yet convinced that the vsti route is the best vs the hardware one, with a pc I can do so many things that will imply a lot of hardware.

Forte looks to me also so dated and not really complete and intuitive, in the other side I think that with Kore there is hope... maybe kore3 will be an elegant solution.

[bburtin]

At this time in yet convinced that the vsti route is the best vs the hardware one, with a pc I can do so many things that will imply a lot of hardware.

Not really. I'm using a 4-year-old Dell laptop with a 1.83GHz CPU, and it's got way more power than I need. I started running softsynths on a P3 way back when. It ultimately depends on which plugins you run.

maybe kore3 will be an elegant solution.

I hope you're right. NI has all the right tools at their disposal. Unfortunately they really botched up Kore2 from a live performance perspective. It's really lacking in the areas of external MIDI control, fast patch switching, etc.