Cheapo Budget Student Orchestra

[JonFairhurst]

I need to make a recommendation for a young composer who needs better sounds than PCI soundcard drek.

He\'s 14, a friend of my son, and will be conducting one of his pieces at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland later this year. He uses Sibelius 2.1 on a PC and a typical PC soundcard. I spoke with his mom last night and she wants to get him some better sounds for his upcomming birthday. Her budget is probably a couple hundred bucks or so.

I see three options:
1) Get the cheapest available GSIF soundcard with a Giga bundle, along with the cheapest available GM MIDI disk. (Problems: a bit over budget, technically complex, may need PC upgrades [HD/RAM], can\'t do big previews - must render tracks to disk.)

2) Get a soundfont capable Creative soundcard. Buy soundfont disks. (Problems: deadend, limited sound quality, medium technical complexity.)

3) Buy a module, like Roland\'s Sound Canvas line. Maybe the Edirol SD-20. (Problems: deadend, limited sound quality.)

I recommended solution 3). The main advantages are that it\'s technically simple, it can load/play enough sounds simultaneously to allow reasonable real-time composing. The SD-20 is $300, which is a bit over budget though.

Two questions:
1) Which would you recommend?
2) Anybody out there want to sell a used module that covers the orchestra?

Thanks!

[J. Whaley]

You might try to find a used JV-1010 on Ebay and buy a used Orch. board. When I was 18 I got a 1080 and orch board and that\'s all I used until after I got out of college (granted Samples weren\'t as easy to use then, so maybe that\'s why i didn\'t try to use them!). I still think it\'s a good place to start. A new 1010 was $400, so used you\'re probably only $150-$200. Orch board used is probably $75 and the sounds are way better then sound Canvas. He should be able to get free Sound Diver software for 1010 to do editing. It\'s really quite simple.

[J. Whaley]

Best thing about the 1010 is after he upgrades his orchestra, he can still use the 1010 as a cool synth module. It\'s got all the sounds of the 2080 which was a $1400 unit! Granted the display\'s a little small.. but you know.

[Jake Johnson]

Hate to say it, but I\'d argue for getting him a decent sound card, say the M-Audio Delta, that sells for $150. (When I bought this, it came with Gigasampler, but no good sounds.)

He could then download one of the many good, free VSTI supporting, sequencers, along with VSTI soundfont players, and many decent soundfonts and samples that could be used to build soundfonts. This system would let him do a lot.

Later (as soon as possible, the best present, would be the Edirol Orchestral, which would give him a lot to work with for many years to come.

Total price:
Sound card: 150
Orchestral: 270

I know it\'s about twice what she may want to invest, but starting with just the sound card and putting other money (birthday\\Christmas?\\etc) together over the next year would give him a much stronger system.

[JonP]

There\'s a great software ROMpler called the Edirol orchestra which I use for parts checking with Sibelius on my laptop. It could be just the ticket as its sounds are way better than any cheap rack synth, its not expensive and not difficult to set up.

Very easy to get to grips with and fun to use images/icons/smile.gif

[JonFairhurst]

The Edirol Orchestral looks interesting, and the demos sound pretty good. Some questions...

* Can it be used directly with Sibelius? In other words, it\'s a DXi/VST, but does it also run standalone? It ships with Cakewalk MusicCreator 2002, so maybe that would host it for Sibelius?

* Does it require an advanced soundcard with ASIO or some other \"special\" driver? In other words, is the M-Audio Delta or other pro card really needed in order to function?

Thanks!

[meeehoon]

I think Edirol Orchestral is nice and fun to play with for that amount of money... Of course, its nothing against GOS but more than enough to fill in for general sounds and definitely the best sounding thing before jumping to the higher level samples like DD, SI, KH etc... Installation is a breeze too...

Anyway, I am not sure how this will answer the 2 questions you posted but I will see what I can do...

(1) Does it work with Sibelius?
Not sure but this is how I use it in Logic (v5.5 on PC). I install it as a VSTi and open it as an Audio Instrument. There are 16 channels of instrument per instance of the Edirol Orchestral and say if I were to access channel 3 of EO, then I would need to switch my keyboard to transmit on channel 3, otherwise I would still be on channel 1 (or whatever channel my keys was transmitting on). This is a little irritating and I am not sure how you can tell Sibelius to transmit on certain channels as I don\'t have it... I suppose Cakewalk will be able to do that?

(2) Asio cards...
This Asio thing is good for low latency (I think it stands for Audio Streaming In Out?)... IF he is composing just from Sibelius and not playing live from a keyboard (i.e. inputting notes in Sibelius manually with a mouse), then I am not sure if this ASIO card will make a difference as he doesn\'t need to do things live... My Asio card (Hoontech C-Port) offers various levels of buffer sizes to adjust the latency when I play on the keyboard... I usually set it to the lowest buffer level to have no latency, but do get pops and clicks... Once I am done with the composition I put it back on the highest buffer level and listen to it and all works fine, so I guess its not critical unless you are playing things live...

Hope this helps??? Oh yah, not that it matters now but the CP on EO is you have to insert the disc once in a while...

Jun - aka meeehoon

[JonP]

Ditto above, except I use Cubase SL.

You can now get freeware vst sequencers and hosts that will enable the kid to run both Edirol and Sibelius simultaneously without having to cough up extra. Best place to look is the KVR website. If you have any trouble here, drop me a private mail because I have a freeware vst sequencer somewhere that uses just 2% of the processor on a 2Ghz laptop and is as steady as a rock. Not very complicated compared to Logic or whatever, but it\'ll do just the job.

Check his processor & HD is up to the task though. If his processor is lower than, say, 1Ghz, he might run out of notes in a complex arrangement all too quickly.

[Ken-P]

Roland HQ Orchestral is for VSTi and DXi, only. No standalone. It requirs good CPU...

If a module is fine, I recommend Roland XV-2020.
It is half-rack size, 64-poly, 16-multi, usb, and it have 2 SRX-board slots. So, if one have more money, he/she can buy \"SRX-06 complete orchestra,\" and \"SRX-04 Symphonique Strings.\"

[Ken-P]

....oops

[Rudi]

There are actually a number of ways of running VST instruments without using a sequencer. You can find a virtual rack that lets you run VSTis simply by loading them in a slot. The url is:

http://www.xlutop.com/ (\"http://www.xlutop.com/\")

The demo won\'t let you save setups but otherwise is fully functional.

There is also a virtual sampler that can run standalone or as a plugin at:

http://www.vsampler.com/english/index.html (\"http://www.vsampler.com/english/index.html\")

Once again the demo won\'t let you save stuff, but you can load various sampler formats (AKAI, soundfonts but NOT giga!)

There are actually some rather good free soundfonts at:

http://www.hammersound.net/ (\"http://www.hammersound.net/\")

These can be loaded directly into Vsampler and played from there as long as you have a soundcard.

I realise all the above is probably too complex for your student, but its\' free and good quality stuff (chainer is excellent)!!!

Rudi images/icons/wink.gif

[Ted Vanya]

Jon:

I agree that a module is best for now. I have a Korg RW3*? module, with orchestral cards. It has much better sounds than any sound card and better than Roland\'s canvas. If he pays the freight, he can have it for $ 1oo.
He can get in touch with me directly if he is interested.

[J. Whaley]

Jon I have both the Orchestral 1 and 2 cards for the JV series. The Orch 2 board (JRX-16 or whatever) is mostly a waste when compared to the first one. So try to help him find the first one. it\'s old, but for a load \'em up orchestra module... it\'s actually hard to beat. Pre-samples, I\'ve tried everything else (proteus, Korg, Yamaha) and the roland collection is by far the best and easiest to use.

J-

[JonFairhurst]

Ted, I\'ll let the parents know about your generous offer. If their budget is tight, this would be a great solution.

J, Thanks for the info about the -16 card. I couldn\'t tell which would be best from the marketing info and patch list. Nothing like a first-hand testimonial!

[JonFairhurst]

Thanks for all of the suggestions!

As it turns out, his computer is a Pentium II in the 500 MHz range. I gave his dad the low down on the HD Orchastral, just in case, but recommended against it for their current PC. I found it for $300 at audiomidi.com.

The 2020 sells for about $600, so it\'s out of budget.

The winner seems to be the JV-1010 with JV80-02 or -16 expansion card. It looks like one can put this together for about $300 - $350, depending on the bids.

We\'ll see what mom & dad decide to do. They\'re very supportive and enthusiastic, so I wouldn\'t be surprised if they get a new PC with the HD Orchestral software!

Anyway, Chris Alex sent me the score that he will conduct at \"The Schnitz\". It has similar instrumentation to his school band. I threw Bigga Brass, GM500 and some freebee samples at it, added some reverb an EQ and rendered to MP3 to give him (and his parents) a feel for life beyond the soundcard. I didn\'t play anything in, didn\'t implement the swells, and didn\'t do any keyswitches or articulation changes. And I pumped it up with some compression and EQ (too much, I\'d say. You\'ll probably hate the EQ!)

Anyway, here\'s Chris Alex\'s composition, The Community Games (Copyright 2002 by Chris Alex, All Rights Reserved)...

http://www.fairhurst.com/jon/music/TheCommunityGames.mp3 (\"http://www.fairhurst.com/jon/music/TheCommunityGames.mp3\")

[Hardy Heern]

Hi Jon,

I think that a S/H ($20) SB Live with the following soundfonts would fit the bill. Soundfonts are very underated and aren\'t really that limited and the investment is meagre. They are merely not the latest thing.

The $30 Soundfont Player (previewing sounds) might also be worth getting hold of.

These soundfonts, linked below, are a real bargain, IMHO, as I believe they are the Proteus Virtuoso sounds!! All the sounds and articulations are listed on the links.

At 14 yrs (unless he\'s a prodigy) he\'s got years to work up to the top sounds if he has the talent and sustained interest. Anyway, if he\'s conducting a real orchestra he only needs to produce a realistic mockup. With a modicum of MIDI controller tweaking the soundfonts will definitely do the job. Better than GS sounds without the tweaking!! This way he can give it a go without risking the world!

Remember that the card has a decent built in hardware Reverb too. The whole shebang doesn\'t put any load on your PC either = cheap PC.

I personally have the Sonido Media orchestra and I\'m not ashamed! The hard bit is the writing and the orchestration....Folk will be lining up to provide the top sounds if he has a gift.

The soundfonts integrate nicely into most sequencers too.

There are a lot of wonderful free soundfonts too just as there are on Gigastudio. For example Maestro Sounds offer good SF and GS samples (superb PIANO etc) although (sadly for me, as I didn\'t get around to downloading anything ¦:^)) the site seems to have disappeared!


Here are the links:

EMU Orchestral Strings:

http://www.soundfont.com/downloads/orchestralstrings.asp (\"http://www.soundfont.com/downloads/orchestralstrings.asp\")

EMU Orchestral Winds etc:

http://www.soundfont.com/downloads/orchestralwinds.asp (\"http://www.soundfont.com/downloads/orchestralwinds.asp\")


EMU Ethnic:

http://www.soundfont.com/downloads/oldworld.asp (\"http://www.soundfont.com/downloads/oldworld.asp\")

Regards

Frank

[XanaX]

I agree with Frank on this one. An SBLive (or even better, an Audigy---which will let you cram more sounds into RAM--- for $50) plus the soundfonts he mentioned will provide a good starting point (plus expandability). I\'m not familiar with Sibelius and its soundfont support, but Cubasis has great soundfont integration---at which point the total outlay is still less than $200. Should your budding composer decide to expand in the future, he could either stick with soundfonts and pick up Sonic Implants mini string lib for $449, or another lib and convert with CDXtract, or move up to Gigastudio, or...??? I think it\'s likely that he\'d eventually grow out of a module, and have to upgrade anyway, so...why start from scratch?

[Jake Johnson]

I still go for getting the decent sound card as the starting point. The Delta card will let him use soundfonts and not have to upgrade when he wants\\needs sounds that require more memory. (Next week.)Paying 150 for the soundcard and under 300 for Orchestral now seems a much better economy than saving $200 and having to buy the better equipment as soon as the lad hears what good sounds are. Remember the feeling you had if you ever wanted something, and your parents bought you something that wasn\'t quite as good--the guilt at wanting more, the need to thank them and pretend you weren\'t disappointed. Let\'s not inflict this kind of emotional damage. Let\'s not wreck this good family and cause a life of resentment and pain.

Could the lad do something to earn the extra cash--help paint the house or clean out the attic?

(And can\'t the dad justify getting himself a new computer\\notebook by giving the one he uses, which is surely a Pentium 3 or so, to the kid...?)