Frank Nordberg wrote:
Phil Taylor wrote:
Are you using Quicktime 6.0.2? If not, update. It seems to solve all
the sound problems.
Yes I am using Quicktime 6.0.2.
The application itself is actually quite good, but the sound samples
they introduced in version 5 really sucks!
Do you mean the Roland GS set or the General Midi set? I don't think
the GM set has changed since Quicktime 4.
It's an old well-known problem to all electronic musicians that hardware
and software manufacturers regard string ensemble sounds as something
that should only be used for long, drawn-out notes in the background. No
attack whatsoever, and the volume takes ages to build. The common
solution to this problem is to mix in some solo string sounds.
Apparently Apple doesn't like this kind of hacks, so the solo string
sounds in QuickTime are just as bad in that respect as common string
ensemble sounds (and their string ensemble sounds are of course worse
than you can possibly imagine). They even remembered to destroy the
secret solo string sound (the fiddle)! There simply is no way you can
have a fast moving strings line within an ensemble with QuickTime 6. No
matter how loud you set it, it'll inevitably drown, simply because the
volume hasn't got time to build before the note is ended.
I wouldn't want to defend Quicktime's sound samples, particularly not
the string sounds, but on my machine 'Acoustic String Ensemble'
(program 48) has a hard attack, as does 'GS Orchestra' (1072). And
the fiddle (110) is still there under Ethnic instruments. All of them
sound the same (or equally crap!) under QT 4.1.2 and 6.0.2.
Then there's the clarinet sound for the Norwegian arrangments, of
course. Sounds like it comes from a cheap mid 80s Casio keyboard. It
took me only half an hour to build a more realistic clarinet sound from
scratch on my battered old DX7.
The obvious solution, sound fonts, is rather cumbersome and doesn't
solve this particular problem any way. What matters isn't what I hear,
but what my visitors hear. I can't just ask them to just download and
install a cuple of megabytes of sound fonts to play the midis at Musica
Viva.
Even the old QuickTime 1 I use on my old LC is better. Sounds tacky, and
you can forget everything about realism, but at least it works!
One of the great things about QuickTime as a midi player, is that it
established a common platform for how the midi samples sounds. It
doesn't cost a dime and you can use it to play midis on most any
computer you like with more or less the same results. Unortunately, with
QuickTime 5 Apple blew it big time :-(
They introduced a number of bugs with QT 5, some of which persisted
until QT 6.0.1, but I don't think the GM sound samples changed at all.
I suspect you may have something wrong with your QT installation. One
problem that I've seen is that the network installer sometimes fails
to update everything that it should, so you end up with a mixture of
files from different QT versions. Despite the fact that I have to
download over a 56 kbaud modem connection I make a habit of always
downloading the free-standing installer. I then go through my system
folder and trash the Sound Manager plus every file with 'Quicktime' in
its name, and re-start the machine before running the installer. (I
keep the old installers, of course, just in case I want to go back to
an earlier version.)
Phil Taylor
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
