64-bit Alternative to Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth MIDI Generator?

Anonymous

I'm trying to find an alternative to the MIDI synth driver built into Windows 7 64-bit - namely the MS GS Wavetable Synth.

I have a Creative X-Fi card (64-bit drivers of course) but to my woe I discovered that the very nice Creative MIDI synth supports 32-bit systems only.

I do a lot of work with MIDI files and am supremely dissapointed with the Microsoft Synth - it sounds like the instruments haven't been updated since Win 3.11, which is probably true. I'm trying to find a better-sounding alternative that is compatible with a 64-bit operating system, but hours of searching have yielded nothing useful.

Does anybody have any reccommendations?

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Anonymous

What I do, is I use this card for my music, games, movies, etc. but for MIDIs, I have an old Pentium III computer with an ISA SoundBlaster AWE64gold sound card. It's a much older card and is not as good with games and media, but it actually has a better synthesizer than the SB X-FI HD.

Yes, all of the AWE32/64 cards *had* near professional quality synthsizers [1], but they are a bit old now. The super awesome synth of the AWE32 was a benefit Creative Labs got when they bought the professional synth company EMU out years ago. If you are a professional and you are willing to use a standalone synthesizer, then you can consider getting a rack module for a few hundred dollars off of ebay:

http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/emuxl1.php [2]

or you can get the highly recommended EmulatorX3. EmulatorX3 is without a doubt absolutely awseome and it can run on your main computer or a standalone separate computer:

http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?category=501&subcategory=168&product=17681

Also recommended is the kx project that Poidude mentioned. If your emu10kX based sound card/OS is supported by the kx project, then you can do almost anything with it...

[1] - The Wave Table synthesis of the AWE Cards was near awesome, but the cards were a bit lacking in real time filters that are available in the more recent and expensive EmulatorX and stand along rack products for professionals.

[2] - While these stand alone rack modules work well for pro-audio, they probaby won't work that great for gaming because they don't tend to come with a General MIDI bank. You would have to find such and expansion card and that might be difficult . On the other hand, EmulatorX3 does come with a General MIDI bank if I remember correctly, but it is a software only solution.

Best,

Shawn

Lastly, this whole dicussion is a bit on the silly side since I don't think most modern games actually use MIDI and SoundFonts/Wavetable/SoundBanks anymore. Instead, I think game writters tend to compress their sound tracks into variations of MP3/OGGs files which are then decompressed by by main CPU and send straight to the Digital to Analog chip on the sound card thereby completely voiding the need for Wavetable or MIDI. If I understand this correctly, mostly only professional musicians use MIDI these days.

Note: I am a professional *.NET programmer and hobiest musician. While I don't know much about writing video games, I do know a bit about music and Creative Labs...

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Anonymous

I don't know if you still need help (your post is really old) but I'm having the same problem with my SB X-FI HD card. I have searched high and I have searched low and, sadly, I don't think there's any solution to this. What I do, is I use this card for my music, games, movies, etc. but for MIDIs, I have an old Pentium III computer with an ISA SoundBlaster AWE64gold sound card. It's a much older card and is not as good with games and media, but it actually has a better synthesizer than the SB X-FI HD. You can buy this card on ebay for like $7.00 it's really cheap. I know this doesn't really help at all, but it is a very good synthesizer, and I highly recommend trying it!

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Anonymous

2010-07-08T02:44:21+00:00

You can do that with a virtual midi cable like MidiYoke...

That is cool!!! I didn't know MidiYoke existed. I once used the breakout box that came with my Emulator X2 software with a real MIDI cable to run the out of MIDI1 (controlled by Cubase) into the in of MIDI2 so I could run Emulator X2 as a standalone non VST app apart from Cubase. The only problem was that I had a little bit of latency with the solution, so then I ran the out of MIDI1 into the in of MIDI2 and then run my keyboard into MIDI1. I think made Emulator X2 respond to both the in of MIDI1 (controlled by keyboard) and the in of MIDI2 (taking the out of MIDI1 that was controlled by Cubase) and my MIDI latency pretty much disappeared and I didn't have to run Emulator X2 as an VST.

Then I finally gave up with the experiment and decided to just run Emulator X2 as a VSTi within Cubase.

If I would have known about MIDI-Yoke however, I wouldn't have had to that weird patching of MIDI cables.
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Anonymous

2010-07-08T03:09:06+00:00

On my system it won't let me change my MIDI output to my MIDI out port, mainly because my sound card does not have one.

Long, Long ago, before many were even born, I used to work for Creative Labs as a Tech Agent in Stillwater. Back then, all Creative Labs cards had MIDI in/out ports on the same dongle that supported the joystick. Times have changed a quite a bit since then, but I believe some of the Audigies still have MIDI in/out:

Click on

http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=2602

and expand the Technical Specifications Tab. You notice that this particular model of the Audigy supports MIDI in/out ports and a 32 channel 64 voice MIDI synthesizer using patented 8 point interpolation (when I worked for Creative, 4 point interpolation what the big thing...:-) ). It's been a long while for me, but I believe your Audigy should have come with Vienna Sondfont Studio which you should be able to use to load a General MIDI sound bank:

http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=5184

You should then be able to use the Hardware Synthsizer on your Audigy to play back high quality MIDI music with no CPU load. Years, ago. Creative Technology of Singapore bought out EMU of California and brought hardware wavetable synthsis and hardware DSP effects to the SoundBlaster series of cards. The result was that Creative's Labs cards were waaaaaaaay ahead of their time blowing absolutely everything else in the same price range out of the water! Now that common CPUs are so ridiculously fast, the advantage of Creative Labs cards isn't quite so pronounced, but they are still a good bang for the buck! If you want get really serious, consider Creative's EMU Line of sound cards [1] (Warning - EMU cards may not work well with games...):

http://www.emu.com/products/

EMU has made great and awesome contributions to Creative Technology and I hope they continue their pattern of innovation.

Note:

I haven't worked for Creative Labs in over a decade. I do not represent Creative Labs, Creative Technology or EMU in any way. Finally, everything in this post is public knowledge.

[1] - Also note that today's professional EMU cards may not have the onboard synth like the SoundBlaster cards do. This is because today's professional music trend is toward software instruments such as VSTi (Steinberg) and DXi (Cakewalk - Twelve Tones).
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Anonymous

2010-07-08T03:33:59+00:00

It's an intresting workaround, but at least on my system, there's an additional flaw with that. On my system it won't let me change my MIDI output to my MIDI out port, mainly because my sound card does not have one. As far as I can tell, neither my sound card nor my x64 drivers have any decent support for MIDI playback. Maybe I have a different version of the Audigy card, but I've pretty much given up on the issue. I've actually succumbed to the ultimate evil and have been using QuickTime (*barf*) to play back the raw MIDI files I have (since it has an internal wavetable), but that still doesn't help with the music notes software.

Ah well. Let's hear it for non-support of 64-bit operating systems. (BOOOO!)

That's why I'm using Synthfront. My audio interface does not come with a synth (no professional audio interface does). Give it a try. If you need a soundfont I can provide the one I'm using, which is very similar to Windows'
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