I'm absolutely new to this so forgive me for going over old ground.

I've just bought a midiman 2x2 interface to hook my Yamaha P200 electric piano up to my G4 TiBook.

I downloaded Pro Tools FREE as something to get started playing on and after a couple of hours I started to understand the basic functions of recording, playback, etc..

What has disappointed me is the quality of my mac's built-in GM sounds they're awful! I know I can use my P200's piano sounds for midi playback, but what if I want realistic sounding drumkit, saxophone, and digeridoo all playing at the same time!?

I've read various web info and I think I need either a hardware expander or a soft synth, but I don't really know where to start. Software sounds a better choice for me as I might be able to try out a few demos rather than buying the wrong piece of hardware!

What I want to do at the moment is be able to write multi-track music and listen to a more realistic playback than my mac's midi sounds currently give me.

any help appreciated.

paul

I would look into something like Logic's Big Box if I were you. It comes with a few virtual instruments and a sample player that comes with nice selection of samples that may fill your desire for more realistic sounds. Plus if you want to do lots of midi work.... that would be the better app than PT. I love sample playback because I have samples from a very big and awesome sounding piano that sounds very realistic as well as flute and string samples that are terrific too. You can find more sampled instruments on the net to add later too.

Thanks for the reply. Maybe that gives me something to aim for. But in the mean time, is there a software solution I can get that is cheaper (read "free"!) that will improve the instrument sounds my computer allocates to midi tracks? I can't proclaim to know where the sounds are coming from now—I think they're part of Apple's Quicktime(?) Are there any cheap/free alternatives?

If I'm not making sense, let me know and I'll try again!

thanks

paul

I understand what you are saying... unfortunately, without investing some $$$ in software... I don't see this being possible but I may be wrong. Good luck.

You can probably to get the "UglyVSTi" to work with Pro Tools FREE. You will be amazed!

http://www.netspace.org/~leigh/max/

There are a lot of free VST instruments scattered around the web.

http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~thman/vst/vs...t-instr-02.html
http://www.mda-vst.com/
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/mac/SOFTWARE_SYNTHESIZERS/

For OS 9, I actually like Virtual SoundCanvas, which is a software version of Roland's SoundCanvas SC-88 (?), I think. It's probably not that expensive at this point and it sounds pretty good.

I left out another good VSTi link:

http://www.kvr-vst.com/inst.php

baghun.... ProTools doesn't not work with VST plugs... it only works with RTAS and Audiosuite Or AS plugs or the full blown ProTools will accept TDM as well but must have farm cards. VST is usually Cubase, Logic, Peak... etc.

Synthetic:

For your own knowledge I suggest you download the "UglyVSTi" (from the link above) and at least read the accompanying instructions.

The package includes a plugin for Pro Tools that allows the output of the UglyVSTi standalone application to be routed into Pro Tools via DirectConnect.

Although users of this setup contend with the usual latency of DirectConnect, it allows them to get the output, one at a time, of VSTi into Pro Tools. I've used it and it works with most instruments (free or commercial) if you have enough RAM to allocate to UglyVSTi.

Macmonkey, let me know if you try this or if you run into any problems.

hmm, that's a new one to me... will have to look into that more.