I tried to build a new big band score last night using the JABB
library. For some of the instruments I had to go with SoftSynth. It
took me three tries to get the score built, without my system kept
locking up. And once I did get the score built, it locked up when I
tried to play the score.
I had previously had some success playing smaller ensembles using these
instruments, so I was surprised by this. I have plenty of memory and
CPU, so that's not the issue.
I was using a Soundblaster card from around 2002. I had the latest
driver, but that was about 2003. The Soundblaster behaved strangely.
Whenever Finale was running with the Kontakt player in use, the
Soundblaster could no longer play MP3 files.
I had bought this card because it has 2 hardware synthesizers on-board,
which made a pretty good solution for playing 32 instruments back in the
day. Nowadays, everything is done in software, so that isn't an issue.
However, this Soundblaster card also gave me a MIDI port for my keyboard.
As it turns out, I recalled that I had an Edirol 4x4 USB MIDI interface
collecting dust on the shelf. So I removed the Soundblaster, activated
the audio controller that is built into my system board, and installed
the Edirol MIDI interface. Now everything works much better. I'm just
passing this along in case there are other people with older
Soundblaster cards, beating their heads against the wall.
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
