On 27 Sep 2005 at 20:03, Kurt Gnos wrote: > At 00:40 27.09.2005, you wrote: > >If you truly think that you can't set pan and reverb in Finale, then > >it suggests to me that your statements about Finale's inadequacy for > >tweaking a performance are not very credible, because you clearly > >don't know much at all about what Finale has been able to do for more > >than a decade. > > I knew. And I even did. But in Finale 2006 you have the mixer view > that lets you do everything easily, without having to put expressions > and things in to do the task. . . .
But you said it couldn't be done until recently: > but... until Finale 2006 you couldn't even set panorama to a sound. That was not true, but you said it. You didn't say "it could only be set in a way that to me, personally, feels clumsy and unnatural because it's done differently than the way I'm accustomed to in sequencers." Had you said that, I would have responded with remarks about how I, personally, don't find the UIs of sequencers to be intuitive or easy to use. > . . . And the GPO sounds are definitely better > than window's GM-softsynth and the smart music softsynth. Human > Playback is also a step in the right direction. Well, that's not really relevant to the discussion. I was talking about the direction the industry had gone in terms of what gets provided for default MIDI playback. When I bought into the Turtle Beach family, it looked like the quality of generally available wavetable synths was just increasing and increasing. And TB became for a while Dell's on-board soundcard provider, so a lot of Dell machines came from the factory with TB wavetables. Although it wasn't the better sample set that I have been using in the two TB soundcards I've had, it was significantly better than the soft synths that have become common (Quicktime, MS Soft Synth, and also the Finale Soundfont). That's a different subject, as it has nothing to do with Finale's native capability to edit MIDI. It does relate to the subject of Finale 2006 now incorporating GPO, because it reflects the trend towards increasing dependence on soft synthesis at the expense of performance, utilizing the CPU instead of a dedicated DSP for sound processing. It's why Finale 2006's GPO won't run usably on a large number of computers out there (perhaps even the majority?). And I'm lamenting the direction that the industry took in this regard, because it looks like a mistake -- it's much cheaper for the PC manufacturers (they save a whole $25!!!!!), but for the end users, the cost in functionality/performance is pretty large. > I am sure some time you will have to get a new computer, and maybe you > will find out how much better your stuff will sound... I'm hoping to have the money this fall to get a new motherboard with a fast CPU, and hope to have the money to put in a lot of RAM. But I have no intention of commiting to GPO output of my files (even if I decide to buy Finale 2006) because I still want to produce General MIDI compatible MIDI files that I can put on my website. Perhaps I will experiment with what I can do with HP and GPO after the fact (for one, I have dozens of files already created for GM playback), but I don't think I'm interested in investing the amount of time it will take to get too much out of GPO playabck. > But to come back to the start of the discussion. I agree that your > soundcard may sound better than some soft synths. I have got a 5000$ > midi keyboard (workstation), and it certainly sounds better than any > soundcard synths I know of. But I think, for an impression of your > score, a finale playback (your listeners can always downlad Finale > notepad for free) or a simple midifile (they can sound ok if well > programmed) will do the job. On a modern computer the difference in > sound will be about a hundred times less than the difference in file > size. For broadband users this shouldn't matter. As I already said, I'm providing the MP3s for the people who don't have MIDI playback that's as good as even my non-state-of-the-art soundcard playback. > OK. One advantage of the mp3s in comparison to midi files and finale > files - your listeners will only be able to copy your music by ear, > and not by loading it into a music software...;-) Well, I'm still providing both, because the dialup user isn't going to want to download the MP3s. And if you'd look at the web page, you'd also see that I'm providing graphics of the full scores (all on one line): http://dfenton.com/Midi/index.php?stem=Foerster10_1&last=44¤t=2&; mvt=1 I haven't yet incorporated the MP3s, as I haven't coded the page (I want the MP3 links to appear on the left only when there's an MP3 available, which means new PHP coding that I haven't gotten around to yet) and don't have the MP3 files created yet (it's a pretty time- consuming process, since capturing the synthesizer output is a real- time operation) and I just started in on this part of the project. I put the graphics up because they aren't good enough quality to serve as a full score, and you couldn't perform from them, anyway. Also, the MIDI files aren't enough to produce a score, either. Last of all, if anyone wants to perform the music, I'll provide them the parts! Indeed, I fully intend to have PDFs of parts and scores up on the web page in password protected locations, eventually, so it's easy for me to give access to the real thing for certain people. I think many of your points would be relevant if my goals were actually the same as the one you assumed they were. But they are not, so your points are basically not germane. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
