Hi Fred,

And I thought I had sound card woes! I may not have the technological expertise to grasp what is going on, but I assure you I feel your pain. It may even be that I have a glimmer of what the problem may be.

First, though, what you said about being out the money may not be necessarily so. I have seen a 30, and sometimes 60 day money back provision for all the software I've purchased. So you may be able to take heart about that.

Something you said in your last couple of posts brought a tsunami of things I'd rather not remember crashing in. When I got this machine, it had Audigy HD Audio powered by a Sigmatel on-board chip. It defaulted to Microsoft's GS Wavetable Software synth, but also had a Creative Soundfont synth, with which I could use soundfonts.

I had a horrid and very depressing time trying to get a sound card (that is the physical card you have to put in a slot in the computer) to work at all, even though I disabled the Sigmatel chip in the BIOS set up, which the Dell techies assured and re-assured then re-re-assured me was all I had to do. I wanted the sound card, btw, because I wanted to have more than 16 channels and the card has 2 hardware synths which allow up to 32 channels. And also because I got messages similar to yours when I tried to record. In fact, no recorder would give me the what you hear or midi synth option to start with. And the sound quality wasn't very good to begin with.

Finally, I not only disabled the on-board audio in the BIOS setup, but I deleted every thing that had anything to do with audio before re-installing the sound card. Finally, the card would work and I have good sound and can record using midi synth and what you hear. I also have to set volume levels down at under 50% to keep Soundblaster from living up to its name. And I have only one hardware Synth, though there are 2, that I can use without crashing the computer; so while I can have up to a couple of gigabytes worth of soundfonts on that, I still have only 16 channels available.

Anyhow, I feel your pain acutely. What I am wondering is whether your computer has an on-board chip powering your audio. Your lack of options for recording sounds like the same situation I had with the Sigmatel chip. Neither I nor the Dell techies found any way to be able to record from Composer, or any software for that matter.

My rage when I think about all this still increases my vituperative vocabulary to a level that even Shakespeare would have envied. My wife used to wonder why steam was rising from my hair and smoke was billowing from my ears.

However, there are consolations.

One is that, as long as I can get everything into 16 channels, I can use soundfonts. There are a lot of them out there and I have been able to cull some very good ones for a number of instruments. So far I have only looked at freebies, but I imagine some of those that are for sale might be even better. So far I have found a violin, cello, tuba, clarinet, flute, and a lot of percussion instruments that sound as much like the real things as is probably possible. As long as I need only 16 channels, I can record directly from Composer, then use Acoustica as described in the next paragraph.

Then there is Syntfont which lets you replace GM instruments with any soundfont located in any folder on your computer, and it gives you 32 channels, then play it to a .wav or .mp3 file. The file can be loaded into Audacity or Acoustica and reverb, chorus, graphic equalizer, stereo enhancement, etc. effects applied. (Synthfont is donationware.)

There is also VST, which I don't begin to understand, and haven't had time to explore yet.

The trouble with Synthfont is that to make changes, Composer has to reloaded, the changes made, then Synthfont has to be loaded and the changes tried out, then if there are more changes, etc., etc. Also, Synthfont has dropouts when maximum true polyphony reaches 100.

Also, Mark has said somewhere in the Forum that a version of Composer is in the works which will allow more than 16 channels and use soundfonts, which would get rid of the necessity of switching programs to make every change. (Some things, like volume, pan, etc. can be changed in Synthfont, but a crescendo can't be added or modified, for instance.)

So, although you may not get quite the sound of GPO instruments, as long as your card or chip can use soundfonts and you can use Audacity to make recordings and work with effects, you should be able to get the kind of sound that is close to what you want. And probably in a much simipler fashion.

So take heart. One way or another, you will get there.

all best,
mgj

PS. If you'd be interested, I could make and send you an .mp3 file in which first I'd play the MS Wavetable SW synth instrument and then a more realistic soundfont that I've found. You can hear the vast difference even in the raw recording; then you could load it into Audacity and experiment with the application of effects. Although I have a system which is still far from right, it would give you an indication of what is nonetheless possible.