I am new to this group. I am considering buying the MOTU Symphonic Instrument software - but before I plunk out the money, I wanted to know if it would work for my use.
I use a Yamaha P70 digital piano as the MIDI controller, and want to run the software through a Dell Laptop with 512K memory and Windows XP.
Basically, I want to just be able to input strings and other woodwind instruments into already made digital recordings. In other words, play along and record the SI sounds on another track via MIDI.
Would I be able to do this with the MSI software, and would I be happy with the results? Can I just play via MIDI and get realistic sounds? It looks like many people are using Cubase, etc., but I just want to record the strings into a Korg Digital recorder. What do you think - buy or not buy? Thanks for your honest input. Gary
Help on making a decision
Moderator: James Steele
Well, yes and no. As terrible as this sounds, MSI does some things very well, and others quite terribly. I bought it about a year ago, and have come to the conclusion that for string sounds, MSI is quite terrible. It's not so much the sound QUALITY that sucks, but the SEVERE lack of articulations makes it basically impossible to work with the string sounds. The strings are all very SLOW sounds, and it's pretty hard to get anything quick or snappy out of them. I have had some success with them in very slow, somber pop songs among other things, but all in all, I was very dissapointed in how few strings patches there were.
That being said, MANY of the other sounds are really pretty great. Although some of the lower end East West Orchestra libraries have many more string articulations and things, MSI really does seem to have a more realistic sound quality to most of the instruments in comparison to East West.
If you are ok with not being able to do fast string runs and things, then most of the rest of MSI is fairly cool. The organs are awesome, nice choirs, good percussion, woodwinds, even acoustic guitars, harps, etc. are all good sounds, and are pretty damn playable.
In my opinion though, MOTU really dropped the ball on the strings. The plugin has astonishly few string patches (if you ask me anyway). Maybe I'm just crazy, but when I think of 'Symphonic', the first sound I think of is STRINGS! The sound of the string patches that ARE included have a good sound, but MOTU should have probably made the string patches more like half the library, instead of a tenth of it.
In response to your specific needs (not having/using a sequencer to edit/program the parts) I would probably skip it. If I were you, I'd go find a cheap Roland xp-30 used somewhere, as it has TONS of orchestral sounds (it has roland's 'orchestral' expansion built in, as well as tons of other xp-series orchestral sounds), and they are all designed to be very playable. Plus you'd get about 1000 other patches to round out a super awesome keyboard. If you don't have a sequencer to use, I wouldn't recommend MSI (or any software for that matter), but keep in mind that there are probably free sequencers/recording software out there if you look around.
halcyo
That being said, MANY of the other sounds are really pretty great. Although some of the lower end East West Orchestra libraries have many more string articulations and things, MSI really does seem to have a more realistic sound quality to most of the instruments in comparison to East West.
If you are ok with not being able to do fast string runs and things, then most of the rest of MSI is fairly cool. The organs are awesome, nice choirs, good percussion, woodwinds, even acoustic guitars, harps, etc. are all good sounds, and are pretty damn playable.
In my opinion though, MOTU really dropped the ball on the strings. The plugin has astonishly few string patches (if you ask me anyway). Maybe I'm just crazy, but when I think of 'Symphonic', the first sound I think of is STRINGS! The sound of the string patches that ARE included have a good sound, but MOTU should have probably made the string patches more like half the library, instead of a tenth of it.
In response to your specific needs (not having/using a sequencer to edit/program the parts) I would probably skip it. If I were you, I'd go find a cheap Roland xp-30 used somewhere, as it has TONS of orchestral sounds (it has roland's 'orchestral' expansion built in, as well as tons of other xp-series orchestral sounds), and they are all designed to be very playable. Plus you'd get about 1000 other patches to round out a super awesome keyboard. If you don't have a sequencer to use, I wouldn't recommend MSI (or any software for that matter), but keep in mind that there are probably free sequencers/recording software out there if you look around.
halcyo