Many of the links at Ozpeter "USEFUL LINKS" 12/3/04 5:40pm (the list of my bookmarks in the second post) are vst / vsti related, with the emphasis on freeware.... you are standing on the edge of a time-consuming but most enjoyable obsession, if my experience is anything to go by!

Here are some free VSTi's that will give you some good sounds. IMO, the first in each category is the best, but the others are worth checking out. In some instances, I've provided more than one address, as a guard against dead links. Enjoy.

(Note: mdaPiano kept crashing in my SynthEdit program until I moved both pointers to approximately the "e" spot in the "Muffle" setting. You may need to do something similar, but do it. The program is worth making it work on your computer. Check out the Concert Piano pre-set.)

MIDI Cables: (if needed)

http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm
http://members.nextra.at/hubwin/midi.html

HOSTS for playing VSTi's: (free)

http://www.tobybear.de/p_minihost.html (need ASIO)
http://www.hermannseib.com/english/vsthost.htm
http://www.hermannseib.com/english/savihost.htm (check this out)
(if you get a "could not be found" message, highlight address in browser and reload)

http://www.xlutop.com/html/chainer.html
http://www.console.jp/eng/ (not free)

ORGAN:

ORGANized Trio
http://www.soundfonts.it/
http://www.soundfonts.it/?a=read&b=13

Morphiza
http://www.krakli.co.uk/freesynths.asp
http://www.krakli.co.uk/zips/Morphiza.zip

Phibes
http://www.funkelectric.com/%7Ecockaigne/
http://www.funkelectric.com/~cockaigne

OrganOne
http://www.bojo.dk/downloads.html

PIANO - Accoustic

mdaPiano
http://www.pluginspot.com/documents/46.html

GrandPiano
http://www.sinte-virtual.com/evmsynths/free.htm

4Front Piano
http://www.yohng.com/piano.html

PIANO - Electric

Mr. Ray
http://www.soundfonts.it/
http://www.soundfonts.it/?a=read&b=16

mda ePiano
http://www.pluginspot.com/documents/46.html

MIDIKbd
http://www.dehaupt.com/SynthEdit/DH_MIDI_Kbd.htm

SYNTHS:

SuperWave P8
http://home.btconnect.com/christopherg/main.htm
http://home.btconnect.com/christopherg/superwave-p8-16.zip
http://www.superwave.co.uk/

Stringer
http://www.falkes.org/music (scroll down)
http://www.falke.adbe.org/stringer_12_setup.exe

Crystal
http://www.greenoak.com/crystal

Oberon
http://www.funkelectric.com/%7Ecockaigne/

FreeAlpha
http://www.linplug.com/Products/FreeAlpha/freealpha.htm

ASynth
http://antti.smartelectronix.com/

Synth1
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/5005/softsynth/index. html
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/5005/

Excellent links! And unlike mine, well ordered....

http://www.wstco.com/pianosounds/downloads/ has some excellent piano soundfonts which can be played with the free soundfont player from http://www.rgcaudio.com/sfz.htm - imho better than the non-soundfont pianos, but it does depend on the musical context.

For me the best organ is at the downloads page of http://rumpelrausch.de.vu/ - the zr3. Also the Crazy Diamonds string synth there. All good stuff.

Ah, I had wondered whether yours was the Native Instruments one - not cheap by comparison!

You open the piano soundfont within the player itself and therefore it doesn't matter where the soundfont is on your system. I keep all soundfonts in a dedicated folder quite separate from the vst folder.

Well, the SFZ player can be used as a VSTi, so... :) - but I'm surprised you don't get a result on your Win98 machine (Win98SE?) - they seem ok on mine, with an SBLive Platinum card.

BTW my preference for ZR3 is based on personal taste for its perhaps smoother sound, rather than accuracy of emulation - I wouldn't be able to judge that.

This is an area of creative endeavour where all we can do is to throw in our experiences brainstorming-style and leave it to the readers to extract what juicy morsels they care to fish out of the resulting soup!

"Meanwhile I see Cakewalk have bought RGC Audio "
That explains the appearence of SFZ+ soundfont player bundled with the preview 64bit Sonar.

Do check the sfz FAQ at the RGC site. It has several methods you can choose for playing the soundfont, including direct from disk.
Full functions are only available if your machines CPU supports Intel SSE instructions.
Also note that not all soundfont instruments appear in the first bank or preset. I don't know why, perhaps they've been taken from larger multitimbral banks and have retained their original location?
If the soundfont file is .sf2, it should be usable.

Hey guys, for those of you who have tried out the Piano VSTs, could you guys recommend a good one that has a darker sound? I have a very high quality Steinway bundled in the Garritan Personal Orchestra sampler. I am happy with the sound very much, but it's rather bright for some of the songs I have in mind and was hoping to find a decent quality alternative for free or a decent price for when something darker is needed. EastWest makes a great Bosendorf (sp?) sample that sounds wonderful, but it's way too much for my limited budget right now. Any good piano VST's for something a little darker? I would prefer it not to sound too warm, but some warmth is certainly ok and it doens't have to be free but that is preferable. Thanks in advance!

Thanks Ken, I did check out the demo on Steinberg's site and "The Grand" seems quite comparable to the quality of the Steinway that comes with Garritan PO. It sounds like it may be darker as well, but I can't tell for sure without demoing it I am thinking (small file downloads aren't the best for hearing critical details ;) ), I'll have to see if I can turn any leads up on the internet for that demo as I am in a very bad area for music gear. There are only 2 music stores in the area, both very small and I don't think either one sells any kind of software at all, except for the recording software that comes bundled with some of the Digitech pedals now. There isn't a large demand for music gear around here and so they only stock bare minimums and safe items, like small amps and cheap guitars.

My Cubase copy came with an extras CD that has some form of light version Halion listed on the front. Perhaps if I dig around on that CD they'll have a trial version of the piano or a light version? Thank you very much for the lead!

In its standalone form, Sfz can record direct to disk and there should be no reason why that won't work while playing back previously recorded tracks in Audition. Then you can insert the Sfz-recorded track into the Audition session, trim as required, and slide into sync with the other instruments. Not as elegant as being able to use it direct in Audition, but saves purchase of Cubase!

Thanks bonnder. I will be checking into several of the plug-ins and samplers mentioned on the site lately, this weekend. I'll be sure to check out the mdaPiano you mentioned. I love options! I'll try and post a cmparison with some of these to the Steinway in Garritan when I feel I have fiddled with them enough to give an honest opinion.

Michael, does the Moog synth offer a Rewire connection? I have Arturia Storm 3.0 and it supports Rewire. If your synth does and you are lucky enough, you may be able to rewire the Moog synth into Audition and you should be able to record audio from it that way. I say if your lucky, because Audition's application of Rewire seems to be less than perfect and it may not be stable enough for you to use, but it's worth a try anyway.

Have you tried sfz in standalone mode yet, Ken? Does that make any difference on the volume front?

Ken - while we are waiting for Ozpeter to wake up (he's in Australia if you didn't know), let me respond.

Plug-ins are mini-programs that work from inside a "host" program. Most VST effects are plug-ins. Most VST instruments are plug-ins. In this context, plug-ins are *.dll files. You cannot launch a dll file. It won't run by itself. It must be called from inside a host program. The beauty of this is that VST effects and VST instruments are not limited to just one or two programs. They will work in any host program that supports them. AA 1.5 supports VST effects but not VST instruments.

A stand-alone plug-in is a *.exe program - or any other launchable extension. You can double-click on "plug-in-name.exe" and it will launch and run all by itself. It does not need a host program. In all other respects, "plug-in-name.exe" should work the same as "plug-in-name.dll" - if the plug-in's author says so.

The advantage of using a plug-in in, say, Sonar is that you can record the output of the plug-in directly into Sonar (someone correct me if I am wrong about this). If you use the stand-alone version, it is not hosted inside Sonar - so you would need Virtual Audio Cables or some such to get the sound from "plug-in-name.exe" (the stand-alone) into Sonar.

The author of "Savihost" has created a program to turn plug-ins into stand-alones. I gave the link above, but will repeat it here for convenience. If you wish to record the output of your plug-in, it makes sense to launch it from within the application with which you are going to record (e.g., Sonar; AA). However, if you are experimenting with different plug-ins and simply want to launch them quickly, turning them into stand-alones with the help of Savihost makes them easier to launch.

http://www.hermannseib.com/english/savihost.htm
(if you get a "could not be found" message, highlight address in browser and reload)

You should be able to launch your sfz *.dll file with Savihost, and then load your Yamaha Grand. Two caveats, tho. You will need to rename "Savihost.exe" to SFZ.exe in the same directory where sfz.dll (or whatever the file name is) lives. This may then become the same file name as the stand-alone version of SFZ. Be careful of that. Second, Savihost is a relatively new program. You may discover that it works wonderfully well, or not well at all. If you decide to try it, let us know what you discover.