Getting better sounds inexpensively

[Sherry C]

Hi Mike,

Originally Posted by Krypton17

I'm new to this as well. Does it matter which sound font or program I use when converting midi to mp3?

You could think of the difference in soundfonts and other sound sources (eg. synths, sound libraries, etc.) this way. Let's say you have the sheet music for Beethoven's Fifth. You take that sheet music and give it to your local elementary school for their fifth and sixth grade band to play. It may sound ok, but it's no great shakes. You then take the same sheet music to your local high school band. Sounds better. Take the same sheets to the local symphony orchestra (we're talking the folks with day jobs) and it sounds lots better. Now take the same sheets to the nearest professional orchestra (eg. paid to play always musicians) and it will sound fantastic. They were all playing from the same sheets, but the difference in sound quality is tremendous

In the above analogy, the sheet music is like the .not file in our software (or the .mid that you can export). The GS Wavetable is like the local elementary band - it gets the relative sounds out, but typically sounds more mechanical, lower quality, and no timbre changes and so forth. Soundfonts (aka, the high school/local symphony) can vary in quality of the sounds and "tweaking" capability (eg. whether you can add some "breath" to wind instruments or not, plucking noise for guitars, etc.) Really good libraries, like EastWest or Garritan (aka, the pro symphony), allow you to add a lot of nuances to the performance to bring it more life-like during playback.

I convert my midi to mp3 so I can plug my usb into my stereo system for playing along since those speakers are much better than my laptop. I have a free midi to mp3 convertor program and finale make music.

Most free MIDI-to-mp3 converters use either the GS Wavetable or their own soundfont, which isn't typically a very high quality one.
[QUOTE} I don't see an export to mp3 option in my Composer software. [/QUOTE} It's not there - yet

Does SynthFont have option to convert to mp3?

Yes - Kenneth explains what you'll need to do to set up mp3 conversion for free on your computer on his website (www.synthfont.com)

I do seem to notice that playing the midi file though my yamaha keyboard sounds better than off the stereo mp3 files, but alas the yahama only holds about 8 songs at a time.

It might be worth checking to see if your Yamaha will record a wav file for you of what it plays. You may be able to put that on a memory stick or disk to then convert to mp3 using a free wav - to - mp3 program.

ttfn,
Sherry