Re: soundcard

Hi Monz,

Glad you've got a fast computer now.

At 500 MHz, you could think about using a wavetable
soft synth, and use it instead of a soundcard,
at least until you get a decent one.

The Yamaha one is free for a three month trial
period, after which one needs to buy it if one
wants to keep it.

http://www.yamaha-xg.com/english/xg/index.html

Main drawback of a soft-synth is the latency
- momentary delay between pressing a key and
hearing the note. You don't notice it at all
when listening to a midi file, or when playing
the output of a score editor, but you do when
playing from midi keyboard. One can adjust to
it and learn to anticipate notes - I believe
acoustic organs are like that.

With a fast p.c. and with the latest versions
of the software, the latency gets less and
less.

May at least help tide you over until you get
a good soundcard?

For it's price range I'm very happy with the
Soundblaster Live soundcard, and it has good relative
pitch discrimination. Uses memory for the wavetable,
but that's fine on a modern p.c. Also has
soundfonts.

Does have a rather interesting sound on the default
koto voice when it is
played out of it's natural range (as I posted
to the list about before), but that is
rather endearing actually. However, though it
supports nearly all the standard MIDI conrollers,
doesn't seem to support the portamento controller,
if that is important.

Robert