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soulstice79

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crystal fm synthesis midi

i have a HP pavilion 6330. my souncard is a cs4236/37/38 and the midi is a crystal fm synthesis. when i play wav and mp3 on this card it sounds great. but when i play MIDI the music sounds awful. the guitars sound like a childs guitar, the bass sounds nothing like a bass guitar, and the drums sound like someone beating on a soup can. i am a songwriter and put my ideas in MIDI format. but this hideous sounding MIDI player is killing me. i dont want to invest in a new soundcard because i will be getting rid of this computer in a year or so. what can i do in the meantime to boost my MIDI sounds to where they can sound more realistic without investing in n expensive soudcard? any information would be GREATLY appreciated. thank you!
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surajram

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ChrisSchumann

Wow, that's an old machine. The FM synthesis is killing you. As you can imagine it would if you had to synthesize the sound of each instrument. Even the cheapest new sound cards use sampling to give MUCH better sound.

The newest versions of Windows even come with a software-based sampling synthesizer for playback of MIDI, but your machine is too old to handle that technology.

If you want a really fine sounding MIDI playback, you can always get an external MIDI device (as surajram suggested), either a keyboard or sound module. Spend as much or as little as you like.
I think surajram gave an excellent response that answered the question exactly. The originator can buy an external module to use with this machine until it is sold and can be used with the next PC or in any MIDI setup with or without a PC.