KVR Audio

audiojunkie · Post by **audiojunkie** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 5:48 pm

Hmmm... I'm not sure what to tell you. I use a PC.

--Sean

JavaJ · Post by **JavaJ** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 5:51 pm

hahaha, it's becoming a reality to me- just suck it up and bring my Mac. Just thought it would be easy with the iPad (and would be with the right sounds). I will keep my search- next up- Garageband- seeing if those pads will work well enough.

Thanks for everyones input- maybe Camel Audio will come out with a pad/strings/vox pack that would push me over.

peanut_gallery · Post by **peanut_gallery** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:03 pm

Just to reiterate about BS-16i: It comes with the full General Midi sound bank, which is nothing to sneeze at. You can also get free sound fonts (including lots of pads) at sites like this:

http://soundfonts.homemusician.net/

I will say, though, that the piano, organ and EP sounds on GarageBand for iOS are fantastic. I'm less impressed with the other "synth" and "pad" sounds that GB has, though.

BiancaNeve · Post by **BiancaNeve** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:11 pm

Or build your own sound font with polyphontics

audiojunkie · Post by **audiojunkie** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 8:34 pm

BiancaNeve wrote:Or build your own sound font with polyphontics

Nice! I didn't know that existed.

--Sean

iPlogger · Post by **iPlogger** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:15 pm

JavaJ wrote:Surprised that I am having such a tough time- and I don't think my requirements are that unique......(if any church musicians do find stuff- please post).

........
hahaha, it's becoming a reality to me- just suck it up and bring my Mac.

I play on our church worship team and have come to the same conclusions. As I stated earlier, I could not find any all-in-one package. I did use GarageBand for several weeks (some organs and strings/pads). I was hoping SampleTank would be that ONE app, but many sounds just don't quite fit. Others have too much hiss or sampling artifacts that there is no way I'd use them live. I also find it unstable when practicing, so I'm worried about using it live. I absolutely love the Rock Piano sound on SampleTank but can't have it crash on me during the opening of a song. It seems to be rather stable if I don't do switching of parts, switching preset banks or much with MIDI CC. I found the GB organs superior to SampleTank's but the SampleTank piano significantly better than GB. I just wasn't satisfied with using the iPad. It was not fully meeting the need.

In the end, I ended up buying a hardware rack (Yamaha Rack-XS) and have been thrilled with it. It has increased my sound palette tremendously and I have been creating many new sounds for use in worship. Just like you concluded, bringing your Mac may be the way to go for now.

Don't get me wrong, though. I still use and love the iPad for music. I have a portable keyboard I hook up to it and can practice completely free of plugging in for power. It's still fun and useful for recording. If you had multiple iPads available, then it could be useful live as you would load up two or three main apps you'd want to use and not worry about running things in the background or having to switch apps.

Thanks all for the information on BS-16i. I have been looking into that. Definitely looks like an interesting option/purchase.

JavaJ · Post by **JavaJ** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:13 pm

iPlogger, thanks for the summary. You have likely saved me some $$$ randomly buying synths that just won't cut it. As much as I would like to see the ipad become a serious performing synth- might just not be there yet. I guess I will stick with my backup (Spectrasonics and Komplete- such slouches I know hehehehe).

I was listening to the voices add-on pack for Alcehmy though- it might be the one impulse buy I do just to see if there is a pad that could work (as I really want to use Afterglow from Atmosphere/Omnisphere). Might to the BS-16i as well but would have to look for sound soundfonts that sound really good (don't want to sacrifice sound quality either in my search for ultra portability).

thx

JavaJ · Post by **JavaJ** » Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:47 am

GarageBand is absolutely horrible for this. All the pads are like 5 note polyphony max. Terrible!
I have given up. Just played Omnishere again and it was like scabs were removed off my eardrums. I was silly to expect this out of the iPad. Lesson learned.

audiojunkie · Post by **audiojunkie** » Thu Oct 04, 2012 5:02 am

JavaJ wrote:iPlogger, thanks for the summary. You have likely saved me some $$$ randomly buying synths that just won't cut it. As much as I would like to see the ipad become a serious performing synth- might just not be there yet. I guess I will stick with my backup (Spectrasonics and Komplete- such slouches I know hehehehe).

I was listening to the voices add-on pack for Alcehmy though- it might be the one impulse buy I do just to see if there is a pad that could work (as I really want to use Afterglow from Atmosphere/Omnisphere). Might to the BS-16i as well but would have to look for sound soundfonts that sound really good (don't want to sacrifice sound quality either in my search for ultra portability).

thx

You might want to check out what Digital Sound Factory has for soundfonts--they have a pretty good selection. There are also several other places that have good high-quality soundfonts. One of the things you'll have to keep in mind, is that the RAM on the iPad is quite limited--even on the new version (1Gb on the new iPad vs 512mb on iPad 2). The BS-16i does not yet run soundfonts straight from disk--they have to load up entirely in the memory. This means that you'll probably want to use a soundfont librarian and split up any large banks into single instruments, so that the BS-16i doesn't have to load the entire bank into memory at once. If you do this, you can load some pretty large soundfonts, without breaking your memory barrier.

Speaking of soundfont librarians, I know that there are several. I'd be interested in knowing what everyone else is using, or what good ones anyone would recommend.

Who would have thought that the iPad of all things would be the thing to bring the soundfont format back to life!

Interesting!

--Sean

iPlogger · Post by **iPlogger** » Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:44 pm

JavaJ wrote:GarageBand is absolutely horrible for this. All the pads are like 5 note polyphony max. Terrible!

I was silly to expect this out of the iPad.

Yeah. One of my big issues with GB is the poor polyphony, as I stated earlier "The one issue with it is polyphony. Some of the sounds cut off after five notes". Though I have the iPad 1 so thought maybe it was iPad dependent. It really depends on what base 'synth' you are using. One of the pad synths is limited to 5 notes, but another one has more, but with like two editable options which is SO limited.

I wouldn't say you were silly. It seems reasonable and eventually we will see it happen. There is still the soundfont app. And Addictive is potentially a possibility.

I'm glad you at least looked into it and drew a conclusion on your own. Good to know I'm not the only one who is having this problem.

With Alchemy, the bummer is, the sound examples are based on the Win/Mac version of the soundset which means you may or may not get those particular sounds on the iPad. I now have three of the extra downloads and the sound samples had patches I was really hoping for but were not included on iPad. Recently they have been doing sales of $1.99 on two random IAPs (no sale at the moment). I have been having fun with Alchemy the last few days, but I don't really find it useful for worship sets. Though it has some good, quiet pads/ethereal for prayer background. I like space music and am fiddling around with ideas this week and Alchemy is perfect for this kind of stuff.

Keebo · Post by **Keebo** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 1:30 am

Here are the free soundfont libraries I have installed within BS-16i:

Weeds GM3
Vienna 2.4
ns_kit7 free lite
A soundfont I have labeled (for whatever reason) sf2 (no other info available as these were all downloaded quite a bit ago)

Sorry no links but a search on the interweb may be successful.

None super terrific but some sounds are quite usable.

Good luck.

Karmacomposer · Post by **Karmacomposer** » Fri Oct 05, 2012 3:45 am

Java,

My soundfonts work with SB-16i soundfont player for IOS.

Also, there is Music Studio 2. Buy the ALL INSTRUMENTS in-app purchase for a few bucks and you have tons of orchestral instruments to choose from. The sounds are pretty good considering the size. It comes with strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, guitars, chromatics, synth pads and a ton more. Really a very good app.

Notion for iPad2 and above has great orchestral samples but not so good latency and requires you write notes to the stave instead of just playing.

Mike

iPlogger · Post by **iPlogger** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 8:45 pm

JavaJ wrote:I was listening to the voices add-on pack for Alcehmy though- it might be the one impulse buy I do just to see if there is a pad that could work

The Dream Voices soundbank for Alchemy Mobile is currently on sale for $1.99 this weekend. You should listen to the sound demo first to see if it has anything you might be interested in. Keep in mind, the demos are based on the Mac/Win versions of Alchemy. The Mobile soundpacks contain a subset of the soundbanks so sounds you hear in the demo may not be in the Mobile soundbank.

JavaJ · Post by **JavaJ** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:48 am

iPlogger wrote:
JavaJ wrote:I was listening to the voices add-on pack for Alcehmy though- it might be the one impulse buy I do just to see if there is a pad that could work
The Dream Voices soundbank for Alchemy Mobile is currently on sale for $1.99 this weekend. You should listen to the sound demo first to see if it has anything you might be interested in. Keep in mind, the demos are based on the Mac/Win versions of Alchemy. The Mobile soundpacks contain a subset of the soundbanks so sounds you hear in the demo may not be in the Mobile soundbank.

Well, I bought a venti pumpkin spice latte today and it was awful. $5 totally wasted. Spent $2 on the voices pack and didn't realize that it was a subset, expecting a ton of pads. I think there are 8. Still not what I was looking for, and now know not to expect that much in the packs. So, $7 sort of wasted today

BiancaNeve · Post by **BiancaNeve** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 8:44 am

Karmacomposer wrote:Java,

My soundfonts work with SB-16i soundfont player for IOS.

Also, there is Music Studio 2. Buy the ALL INSTRUMENTS in-app purchase for a few bucks and you have tons of orchestral instruments to choose from. The sounds are pretty good considering the size. It comes with strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, guitars, chromatics, synth pads and a ton more. Really a very good app.

Notion for iPad2 and above has great orchestral samples but not so good latency and requires you write notes to the stave instead of just playing.

Mike

Shame there's no samples of your samples on your site (or if there are I missed them)

iOS synth for pads and strings