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Are softsynths the way to go?

gimmeagig

gimmeagig

Feb 25, 2004
2,891
1,198
Coeur D'Alene,Idaho
#1
Hi,
I'm trying to get into using softsynths but I understand they can be very resource hungry.
My computer is a P4 2.4 mhz 1 gig of RAM, my interface is a Tascam US428 and I'm using Sonar 6 and so far EZ drummer.
It seems that with just EZ drummer loaded my computer is almost maxed out and I have not even loaded any other instruments.
Is there a VST softsynth that has good drums piano rhoded B3 OBX and leads all in one?Sort of a one stop application that is not place a ultra high demand on my computer?
If you could only use one softsynth, which would it be?
 
#2
Maybe add more RAM, but I was doing all that stuff on 512 mb RAM before I upgraded to 2.5 gigs. First of all, is your system optimized well? Also, work on the latency settings as well as the other audio settings in Sonar to improve your setup.

As far as a VSTi which does drums, pianos, rhodes, B3, etc. all in one, there are those ROMplers which do that, but in my experience the quality is pretty poor as opposed to getting VSTis for each specific instrument.

For pianos, check out the new TruePianos VSTi. It's SUPER low on CPU, gives great realism, and has a lot of playability from a pianist's perspective. Other than that, most of the other good piano solutions out there are multi-gig libraries which you'll have to stream off your HD.

For B3 organs, there is Native Instrument's B4. I use Organized Trio, which is really comparable, and free.

For rhodes, MrRay73 (also free) is definitely one of the best. Not to mentioned that it's physically modelled, so it gets great playability, but also, it sounds and feels more realistic than most of the wavetable rhodes VSTis out there as well.

For drums, there are a bunch of great solutions. Addictive Drums seems pretty cool, with its mic mixing capabilities and the numerous drums which you can build your custom drumset with. I can't speak for BFD or DFH since I haven't used either apart from the demos, but I've heard good results from both.

My top choice for drums, however, is the NSkit7, which is a 5 DVD library (which is amazingly priced somewhere around $100 USD). As well as getting numerous choices for kicks and snares and whatnot, you also can play it with brushes, mallets, hands, as well as sticks. Not to mention each drum is sampled with left/right hands (with automatic cycling if you want), and lots of different articulations--stick shots, rims (or as near to the rim as you want in some cases), hihat openness (the hihats alone are 5 gigs), the kick closed or open (whether the beater bounces off the kick or sticks there), cymbal grabs, etc. There's also lots of other percussion goodies that come along, a cowbell (played with sticks, mallets, etc.), a tambourine, and the best conga set EVER--quinto, requinto, tumba, and tumbadore--with real conga techniques in the samples.

Anyway, I think I've plugged enough products. :P

I'm not affiliated with any of these companies, just a fellow consumer...
 
#4
lemur821 said:
2.4 MHz? There's your problem right there.
Click to expand...

:D


Whenever I was working on virtual sound synthesis and I would ask the same questions, it was the same trouble-shooting answers: bus speed, drive speed, max out RAM, cut down (or eliminate) any background programs that interfere or drain resources, including any antiviral programs.

Forgive me if this has been gone over before, but it's been a while since I've been in this realm of TB :)
 
#7
I work on mac, so can't speak to the specs on your system. I do a lot of work on an older 1.2ghz ibook, though, with pretty good results. virtual instruments are hungry, but with some system tweaking (+1 all the above suggestions) they're usable. I use NI Kontakt for most of my instrument samples, I like the libraries and it's tweakable but not in a distracting way. They have two piano packages (elektrik and akoustik) which are very good. I also use some softsynths, but haven't settled on any one in particular... although arturia minimoog has been a favourite lately.

For drums, I was using Battery for a while, but I find it's a little too involved for my tastes, and I haven't been overly impressed by the samples (take that with a grain of salt, Battery has some pretty good mixing/tweaking capabilities, which I haven't properly explored). I recently found EZDrummer, though, and it's amazing... the sample quality is brilliant out of the box, and it the mixing feature is easy and intuitive. It is also VERY resource hungry... for some unknown reason, EZDrummer insists on storing it's samples on the system drive, which really bogs things down...

which brings me to a couple points: 1) whatever your system, you want an external drive for your samples, and 2) freezing tracks is your friend... basically, this commits them to disk so you're not using system resources to read midi and bring up samples, but you can easily un-freeze to do more tweaking.

I do most of my work in Logic, but have recently discovered Reason, which is great for quickly sketching out songs. It's not as tweakable as Logic, so I find I work a lot faster in it. I love the drum sequencer, and the included synths are quite good... I've started doing most of my rough work in Reason, move over to Logic when I'm ready to commit and polish.
 
#8
Yes, EZ Drummer is very resource hungry that's my experience too.Freezing tracks! That is a new concept to me.I gues I have to study my Sonar Manual some more.I'm still in the first quarter.Hane't even gotten to the softsynth part yet and it's not so intuitive that i could figure it out by myself.
 
#9
In idle, my CPU is 3% with EZdrummer. In use, it goes around 7-8%.

When frozen, CPU is around 2-3%.

I have Firefox up at the same time, so maybe that adds a little, too.

Of all the drum VSTis, I like the way Addictive Drums loads up the best, where it loads it drum at a time, but the computer doesn't seem to slow down when it's loading samples, and you can be playing the drums as they load up.
 
#10
Is your PC used strictly for recording? Not having anything on there except what you need to record can make a big difference. Every time I get a new Dell, I F-disk it and do a clean Windows XP install to get rid of the extra junk Dell bundles on there. My recording PC is also never connected to the Net, so I don't have to worry about Adware and such sneaking in and bogging down the system.

I've never found any one VSTi that "does it all" for me either. I agree about Kontakt 2 being a great sampler - the modular voice architecture almost reminds me of my old Kurzweil (sort of a Kurzweil on steroids).

In regard to piano, I haven't by any means tried them all, but the only one I've used so far that really holds its own in a mix of any density is the now venerable ILIO Double Platinum Rock Piano (which I have on a Kurzweil CD-ROM that I converted over to Kontakt 2). It has a very "Bruce Hornsby" kind of vibe to me in terms of how it muscles its way through the mix. I expect the pianos bundled with Kontakt would work nicely in a solo context, but they sound too dark and mushy in a mix for me.
 
#11
gimmeagig said:
Yes, EZ Drummer is very resource hungry that's my experience too.Freezing tracks! That is a new concept to me.I gues I have to study my Sonar Manual some more.I'm still in the first quarter.Hane't even gotten to the softsynth part yet and it's not so intuitive that i could figure it out by myself.
Click to expand...

EZdrummer is actually one of the less demanding of drum softsynths. On my aging DAW (2.4 P4, 1 gig RAM... man, gotta update this thing someday!), I don't have any problems running it. Drumkit From Hell 2 from EastWest (using Toontrack DFH samples), now, that thing liked to chew up all kinds of CPU... and RAM even when streaming from disk.
 
#12
Hey Geoff,
Thanks for turning me on to the Mr Ray and the Organized plugins.I got them working and I love the way they sound.I needed to add a little rev to the Mr Ray and a touch of chorus , now it's great.
As far as drums go,I'm starting to understand a little better how the Softsynth thing works and I think if i get another Gig of Ram i should be able to use EZ drummer and a few more plugins at the same time, even on my old 2.4 P4.
I'm not doing anything elaborate.I'm a bassplayer, so good sounding drums are very important to me and my instrumentations will be kind of sparse anyway.I just want to emulate the sound of a good small band.Funky smooth Jazz sort of retro,without the smooth jazz fluff .That's what I'm going for.
If you know of any other plugins (Prophet V, OBX for example) worth checking out, I'd love to know about them.
 
#14
Try out the demo, that's really the way to see how much resources it takes. On my computer it uses 12% CPU in use, and I like the way it loads up, where you can still be doing other things in your DAW while it's loading the samples. $239 USD is really not bad at all. BFD is $300, and DFH is $269.

Like I said, though, if you have a Halion or Kontakt player (it might even support other formats, too), the NSkit7 is £55 ($108 USD), and it's one of the best, most extensive drum libraries out there as of now.
 
#15
I just figured out that the basic kit in EZD sounds really good and does not load as much into memory.I used EZD with the midi files from Vamtech called drumtrax and that seems very promising.So I'll only be using EZD as a soundengine.Since I'm a bassplayer, and I'm really picky about drummers the grooves that come with EZD are not doing it for me.
 
#17
Sounds like the VST stuff is eating up and spitting your computer back out. For professional work with VSTi and audio recording in one, especially if recording to multiple tracks and using VSTi on multiple tracks overlayed on MIDI, you want more RAM. And Processor speed. Generally, you need major upgrades, and a below average consumer model won't cut it...
 
#18
gimmeagig said:
Hi,
I'm trying to get into using softsynths but I understand they can be very resource hungry.
My computer is a P4 2.4 mhz 1 gig of RAM, my interface is a Tascam US428 and I'm using Sonar 6 and so far EZ drummer.
It seems that with just EZ drummer loaded my computer is almost maxed out and I have not even loaded any other instruments.
Is there a VST softsynth that has good drums piano rhoded B3 OBX and leads all in one?Sort of a one stop application that is not place a ultra high demand on my computer?
If you could only use one softsynth, which would it be?
Click to expand...

If I had only one softsynth to use on a low powered machine it would be Wusikstation, in fact I did the complete soundtrack for a DVD using it only (except for one piece of music where GPO was also used). It's a full rompler type which come with a comprehensive library of sounds, can load 6 oscillators with a full complement of parameter to edit, filters sounds good and the matrix on it is very flexible; interesting for owner of low powered DAW like myself, it's written in assembly and fully SSE optimised, I can load up to 15 instance on a lowly Athlon XP 2800+.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
#20
hey guys, just a quick question. it looks like there are some guys in this thread who may be able to help me. i have a new dell laptop and i loaded the most recent version of my midi player in there (the turtle beach one , voyetra). i'm using the built in microsoft soft synth. the problem is that when i play something back, sometimes there a glitch in the timing. a hiccup. i dont know if this is latency per se, because i'm not using any external synth controllers. i'm just programming a pattern into the player and playing it back and randomly, the time hiccups.is this an issue with the background programs? if so, how do i turn them off. is this an issue of the soft synth using too much resources? if so, do i need to run an external sound module? i use an older version of this program with an older compuer with much less resources, and there is no problem. there is one huge difference though, the synth is hardware based in the sound card. is that the difference? i notice there are no hardware based soundcard synths these days. will i need a midi interface and an external module? if you guys cant help, can you point me to someone or to a service who may be able to help?
(i've contacted the software manufacturer of the midi secquencer and they were no help.)
thanks
 

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