Synthesizers

Soft Synths

  Using just a computer program, software synthesizers emulate or mimic hardware synthesizers, of various types. Not only can one switch between them with the ease of just clicking on a new program, because hardware can be switched quickly, as well, but they would and do necessarily cost a fraction of the hardware. On the other hand, they might be limited versions of the hardware, or otherwise limited compared with whatever hardware might be available. And at present they might require a fast computer, and using Intel MMX.

  There are a number of GM compatible soft synths, which provide samples for the GM 128. The quality of the sound varies, of course. There are soft synths which emulate the older analog synths, that didn't have built-in wavetable voices. And there are soft synths by a couple of manufacturers which mimic hardware modules or synths.

  Among the analog, two of the most popular are Techotoys SEQ-303 and the far more expensive Rebirth (photo). These tend to be based on or inspired by the Roland TB-303, and similar synths, and provide a means for generating rhythms through the MIDI out. The SEQ-303, for example, sets up a repetitive loop, which you can modify, and if you save the whole thing as a MIDI file, it sends out pan controllers for each part of the rhythm after you modify something like pan. These do a lot more, as well.

  Another sort of soft synth just generates a tone, kind of a throwback to the earlier days of synthesizers, and might be presented as sort of a construction set, to let you add things and tweak the basic tone to get some sort of synth sound you prefer. Others are more elaborate, and more expensive, but allow full control over the creation of various top quality sampled or synthetic sounds.

  For the GM compatible, there seem to be a host of these available. Two that I've used are WinGroove and Beatnik. The WinGroove sounds are generally the superior of the two, and WinGroove is supposed to recognize some GS information. Both use proprietary sample libraries that come in at just over 1Meg. Beatnik ships as a free browser plug-in, and plays the MIDI just as designed by whoever created the MIDI/Beatnik file. WinGroove comes with a simple mixer and also allows you to change the patches. The patches/instruments for either are rather different, and MIDIs set up for one may not play on another without an extensive remix or resequencing. Neither is particularly good with things like electric guitars, and these need to be layered (duplicating the track, but using a second, different instrument) to more closely approach a good sound.

  And a mid-1998 note on Microsoft's GM soft synth. Microsoft, apparently, in implementing its Microsoft Internet Music Control for Internet Explorer, is using a new MMA standard .dls 'soundfont' format (Beatnik uses a different sort, with an .hsb extension, WinGroove yet another sort). Unfortunately, while the samples are advertized as coming from Roland, the patches are not merely GM, rather than GS (DLS standard is GM), but are almost just the match of Beatnik, and are not really as good as WinGroove.

  Roland and Yamaha also make soft synths to mimic their GS and XG wavetables, respectively. They both have a couple of versions, a couple of which don't appear to require MMX. Yamaha has a simple 360 instrument XG synth, the S-YG20, a brower plug-in, and also a soft version of the 676 voice XG synths and cards, which needs MMX and by late year 2000 standards a pretty low-end Pentium 166+, and is called, the S-YXG100. Roland soft synths, selling through Edirol, which now handles the PC component line, offers the 500 instrument MMX SC-88 lite, called the VSC-88H.

  Lastly, there's this multi-page review, from Bruce Richardson, of various high-end and expensive soft synths from ProRec SEP 1999. And then here's a review of various softsynths, some not covered, above.

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