YOUR MIDI SOUND and Sound Cards
I have tested and the instruments sound proper on an AWE64 card running Windows 98 and Millennium Edition. There are some instruments that sound strange in Millennium using a Blaster Live card and some songs may sound out of tune. The Live card sounds good using Windows 98 and SE98 but with some slight difference in sounds. Forget Windows XP nothing I sequenced will sound right unless I start all over. Sorry and you can thank Bill Gates.
Some people get an off-the-shelf or mail order computer and are satisfied with the on-board sound that comes with it. This makes the computer a little cheaper but also the sound quality. You will never know the difference because MP3's, Real Audio and CD's sound great on almost any sound system. The difference comes in when you are playing MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) on your computer or on a website. To hear the MIDI file the way it was intended, you need a Wave Table sound card such as a Blaster Live, AWE-32 or 64, or others such as Yamaha or an installed Synthesizer like Roland Sound etc. Then and only then will you hear the songs the way the composer sequenced them. I have friends who listen to my web site, call me and tell me to get rid of a song that really sounds bad on my website. When I check, I find they, or a program they installed, turned off the synthesizer for their sound card. You don't need to buy the latest or best sound card, only one with a wave table synthesizer for MIDI. The computer store will play a CD, MP3 or Wave file and say "Dosen't that sound great!"- Don't fall for it! Have them play a MIDI file for you. The sound card interpets the MIDI into predefined recorded instrument samples it has programed into it. "Junk in, Junk out", "MUSIC IN, MUSIC OUT". The quality should be the same as a CD depending only on the limitation of your speakers. In a lot of the music you buy today, the background was done on a synthesizer. Enya herself did all the music and instruments on her latest CD "A Day Without Rain" the same way. ------------- For as little as $39 or $49 at a computer show you can effectivly by a Grand Piano to play your .mid files.------That's a good deal!
A wave file would be 50 to 60meg. A compressed wave(MP3) about 5meg. and MIDI about 40k, taking only seconds to download the same quality. That's why a CD has only 10 to 15 songs on it. I put MP3's on CD and get houndreds of songs on 1 CD (about 10hrs.) but, you need to get a DVD/CD player that can play MP3's.... I put 1 CD in my living room DVD player and it plays all day. If It could play MIDI it would play all week........
Frank D.