Big Wheel Posted February 8, 2004 Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 I never usually read MacWorld, but we get it at work since all we use there are Macs. The other day I checked it out and they had this rave review of these "virtual instruments" that you can somehow hook up to sequencing software. One of them was this analog synth-looking thing and the other was this organ software! I don't get it. I mean, it looks pretty cool and all, but what's the point? You can't play them like the real thing at all, so aren't these things basically toys? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Alfredson Posted February 8, 2004 Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 That's the Native Instruments B4. It's a Hammond organ simulator program. You can play it via any keyboard that has MIDI and a computer with MIDI (or these days some keyboards have USB interfaces and you can plug them into the computer that way). Then when you set everything up right, you hit a note on the keyboard and the software (in this case, the B4) creates the sound and outputs it through your soundcard. The B4 is the best Hammond simulator I've heard... that said, it still has a lot of things wrong with it... things that are not simulated at all or not correctly. I won't go into it here. What's the point? Well, the program cost about $200 whereas a real Hammond and Leslie would set you back a couple of thousand... not to mention the upkeep. This is a cheap way to get a decent Hammond sound on your tracks. If it's part of a dense mix, you probably couldn't tell it's not real. Also, if you have a powerful enough laptop, you could use this live. I know a cat that did just that. He had a MIDI keyboard and his laptop. It kicks the snot out of any of the current hardware organ simulators like the Korg CX3 and the Hammond-Suzuki XB2. The only crappy thing is not having real drawbars to pull but if you set up enough presets it probably wouldn't matter too much. Almost all hardware synthesizers nowadays are dedicated, streamlined computers meant to produce sound... these programs use your existing computer to do the same thing. It's the WAVE OF THE FUTURE, as I keep telling Joe. Personal computers are infinitely upgradeable and cheap whereas hardware synths are neither. Software is the way to go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Wheel Posted February 8, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 Interesting! The article kinda downplayed the whole MIDI aspect of it, so I didn't realize you could use a keyboard as an input. I assumed that you were supposed to click on the keys or use your keyboard to play different notes. Had a REALLY old simulator program for DOS that did just that, in fact. If you rig it with a laptop, is there any delay between the time you press a key and the time the sound comes out of your amp? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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