Hi Djim,

Can't even pretend to be a techie, but what you say makes sense, even to me. I will spend the new few days looking for a file in which I get the pfffft now and then on the cymbals.

The last file I was getting this effect in was a pretty short piece with a rather small orchestra, the Prelude to the Civil War Symphony.

http://www.notation.com/cgi-bin/disc...gi?35939/36295

That's a midi file, but it still might show, in the last few pages, how I started the cymbals 1/64 of a beat after the Timpani. That helped in a few instances, but not every time. Changing to the Merlin Creative seemed to solve it here, but also in the first movement of a piano concerto where there are passages in which just about everything in the orchestra is playing. I think I could change these back to Vienna and probably the pffft would return.

I'm not sure of this, but I think maybe, while the pffft happens in the .not file, it will be the full cymbal in the midi. No pffft showed up in Synthfont, either. I'll have to load some different fonts into the synth and do some more experimenting.

Maybe what I really need is a new sound card.

all best,
mgj