Multitimbral Options

Cantabile
1

I own Halion 6 and Xpand2!. The sounds are simply not near the quality of my Yamaha Motif. Does anyone know of a really good VST MultiTimbral synth with acoustic instrument sounds such as brass, woodwind, etc that is not the two I already mentioned?

Thanks

2

Have you looked at the Roland stuff? JV1080 and SRX Orchestra would do it, but, of course, there is that nagging periodic charge. I have been an E-MU guy for many years and a lot of it is free now. It is samples, but sounds great. There is also Korg M1, very light on on load. Pretty good sounds for live work…

1 Like
3

My suggestion would be Native Instruments Kontakt, if your budget can run to it. It comes with a huge library of bread and butter sounds - with the option to add your own and third-party library material later.

4

I think the latest EM mag compares HALion and Kontakt, two really high end, multitembral, samplers. I have both, I use Kontakt. I keep trying to remove Kontakt from live use, but it just keeps coming back.

5

Coming at it from another angle: a lot of the “sparkle” of the Motif sounds comes from its effects (which are definitely sub-par on the Xpand2!). But if you add some nice effect plugins to your Xpand rack, you can pimp your Xpand sounds massively! A bit of EQ, maybe some exciter, reverb/delay to taste - different sound altogether!

Cheers,

Torsten

4 Likes
6

It’s getting ludicrous, some of these plugins are mini (and not so mini) DAWs in their own right.
Just for Devilment, I tried putting a Minihost Modular in a Minihost Modular in a Minihost Modular In a Minihost Modular … and it worked.
The first note caused some weird flashes out near Mars and Jupiter and a black cat walked past twice DĂ©jĂ  Vu.

1 Like
7

Good Lord man, did you not watch Inception!!??

3 Likes
8

Thanks everyone for the info and papwalker, that was a great movie.

  1. Try to put Xpand2! through effects.
  2. Dig out my S1000 sample library for some sounds and load them into Halion 6
  3. Look into Kontakt (I own some of the instruments. Just build on them)
  4. Like Corky mentioned, I am seeing if anyone is dumping a module for cheap (great idea). Motif racks are still a little pricey.

Thanks again

9

I find the East and West sounds are awesome and very realistic but they aren’t cheap .

10

Wow! The East West collection is AMAZING! Thanks! I used to use them in the old Akai S1000 days. They were always the best samples. Thanks again!