Here's a good one for you... is there a decent multitimbral VST out there? Something I guess like a Roland SC-88 (or other manufacturers).

In my new PC build the sound card is more pointed to home theater stuff (at least they want you to believe that), and they've done away with Midi... which usually would be fine, except my old Midi sound card is not supported in Win 7.

I could load up a whack of plugins every time,but that's kind of a CPU hungry way to get a couple GM Midi sounds. Maybe the multitimbral VSTi would be just as hungry...who knows. I really should find a piece of hardware...

Rumour is that:

Is GM a requirement? If so, you really might be better off just getting a SoundCanvas off of eBay. (I just bought two a couple months ago!) You can get 'em cheaper than a lot of VSTs and all you need is a single MIDI out port.

If GM is NOT a requirement, Kontakt is a good choice, as there's an enormous number of first-and-third-party sound packs for it.

Maschine's actually a pretty great multi-timbral VST too- but there is no software-only SKU. You need to buy the controller (although you don't need to use it). There's also more MIDI routing configuration required with Maschine than with Kontakt.

EDIT: There's a big thread around here about GM VSTs, but I couldn't find it in a quick search. It was active within the past month, I think.

EDIT 2: Found it: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=362448

Wusikstation

http://www.wusik.com/ww/

if you want quality GM sounds get IK multimedia"s Sampletank

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletank/

Definitely SampleTank. It's 16-part multitimbral and easy on the CPU. It's not the best sounding virtual instrument by any stretch, but it is ok.

I tried Wusik but it's a never ending treadmill of updates and managing huge sound libraries that are not very well sampled.

GM is not necessarily a requirement, no. I was using an XG card previously, and since nothing left the studio that wasn't some form of mixdown, that was fine - the master files were only used right here, so no worry about sound substitution.

What started happening was that I was opening up old project files where there was a midi sound card and of course with the new PC there aren't on board samples, all I got was dead air. LOL.

So, my first inclination was to get a SC/88 or some other hardware solution, since really, an on board Midi sound card is a hardware solution (really disappointed that the SW1000XG isn't supported - Couldn't even force it to work), that would have been my quick down and dirty solution. Only problem with a hardware option is needing to route output to something else to hear it.
The 828 has multiple ins so that's no issue, I was looking to keep things a bit more contained. Since moving I don't have the luxury of a dedicated project studio anymore...

I'll have to think about this now. A SC-88 or equivalent could work with either my M-Audio Fast Track Pro or my MOTU 828 MKII, so that might be the way to go.

Indeed, Wusik Station is Multi-Timbral, super easy to use, and our updates are as often as users require, as we are always adding more stuff to it. Our latest sounds are all HQ, specially the new V7 Library. (its the V6 ultra big library with new updates) You can always select only the latest stuff if that's the case.

Up to date products are bad?

If you are afraid of updates you really should go for Sampletank yes

A GUI so tiny you need to use magnifiying glass to see it, and no 64 bit support yet.

If you can open the XGWorks project, export as a MIDI and note the instruments so you can bring that MIDI export into your DAW.
The latest driver for the SW1000XG card is for XP, after that all software and hardware was discontinued but the XP Computer that I have my SW1000XG card in is working.
I love the SW1000XG card but we have to roll with the times.

I'm on Logic 9 now and haven't turned back even though my SW1000XG card is in a XP Computer that I'm looking at right now, it's pretty much a big paper weight.

Read up on the SC-88, I was looking at that too but I don't think XGWorks works with that hardware so you're still going to have to do some work to get your XGWorks projects working.

Steinberg Hypersonic 2 (this is the old 2005 version) Difficult to find an old used version but worth a try.

I was surprised to see the old Hypersonic 2 installation under Win 7 was without any problems. Same goes for Xphraze 1.2

Steinberg Halion Sonic (this is the new version) Soundwise its very different from the old Hypersonic but both of them are useful.

i dont understand why anyone would buy a Sound-card with onboard GM sounds,they sound so fake! Sampler and ROMplers plugins are vastly superior sound-wise.

GM sound-cards have what ..32 megs of sampled ROM ?

with decent plugins like Sampletank or wusik you are much closer to the real instrument.

No way is the piano of a GM soundcard good compared to what is available now.

Even better is to buy,for example,a sampler like Native-instrument's 'kontakt 5" and download Free libraries and buy commercial sound-libraries.