Generating quality rendering of music from midi

What techniques to you guys use to generate a nice sounding rendition of music from a midi file? What I'm thinking is a way to have instrument samples combined using the midi file by offline processing thus producing a .wav or .mp3 file.

Midis have advantages but they'll sound very different on another person's machine. In a case where I can't record an actuall performance, I'd like to be able to create a convincing virtual one.

The music doesn't have to come real time from the midi, it could take hours to process if needed, that's fine. Final quality with convincing sounding instruments is what I'm shooting for.

Any ideas. Free ones get preference first, so I can determine whether it's what I'm looking for.

Sounds like you're looking for a 'sample library'. Search the software and hardware forum for that phrase and you'll get loads of results along the lines of what you're looking for. I'm afraid you won't find much for free though :(

I used to transfer a MIDI-file directly from SIbelius, and then I opened it in Sonar, assigning my East West Gold Xp-samples to the file. It sounded SO much better than in Sibelius's lousy GM - but all in all, to get realistic sounding performances, you need to "play" all the instruments in yourself.

Thanks for the responses.

You gave me some ideas for research.

Yep sounds like you need a sequencer + sample library.

If you are short on cash I recommend REAPER for a sequencer. Otherwise either Sonar or Cubase would probably be the most popular ones out there.

As far as sample libraries go - the 2 that I most hear of are Garritan Personal Orchestra and East West QL (Silver or Gold).

EWQL has so much more versatility over Garritan, I hear.

Something I do that is totally free..... I make a midi file that has performance nuances in it like performance-like dynamic and tempo inflections and I load it into Finale 2008 Demo, which you can download on their website for free. You'll need to sign up for an account before you can download it, but that's free anyways. Since Finale 2008 comes with SoftSynth, it sounds a little more convincing than just plain midi. So once you have the thing tweaked, you can record it using the Sound Recorder that comes with your PC. If you want any specifics on that process, I can go into more detail of how to get this to work. Here's a sample of what you can get with one of my brass band works as an example... it's a little more convincing then just GM.

Op.27, Totentanz in D minor - eSnips, share anything

For free solutions, you could get a sequencer (such as the free REAPER, as suggested; never used it myself, but I would assume it supports soundfonts) and hunt for some free soundfonts. It's definitely not going to be as high-quality as even cheaper sound libraries, but it should be a few steps up from hardware MIDI.

If you're patient, you can go hunting for higher-quality free soundfont files; if you're looking for a General MIDI one, I suggest starting with Fluid. However, its sounds are far from ideal as a whole; you'll probably want to try others, both sets and individual instruments.

Pianissimum is a great grand piano, too.

Here are my two favourite sites:

SF2 soundfont files, free download (requires registration)

HammerSound (click "Sounds" in the nav, then "SoundFont Library")

Are either of those sound fonts better than Finale's Soft Synth, simply speaking?

I didn't know there was a free version of Reaper, if there are decent fonts out there (I.E. better than Soft Synth's font), I'll have to look into it.

And what are the advantages and/or disadvantages of a non-General Midi sound font/library?

Finale's Soft Synth is technically just a soundfont player; it uses a 30 MB, more-or-less decent soundfont. As with all free things, you'll find a lot of crap out there along with a few gems, so its synthgms.sf2 could be better or worse than what you find.

You could actually substitute in your own Soundfont in Finale; the only downside is that it HAS to be a single GM-compatible SoundFont file. Oh, and it loads the whole SoundFont into memory

Use a good soundfont. Or you can use Native Instrument bandstand, it's a gm vst. It's very very easy to use.

Wow, thanks for all the great input!

I thought this thread was dead.

I haven't used an actual sequencer, just notation programs that can export to midi (specifically noteworthy composer). I'm not that familiar with the ins and outs of midi and midi sequencing. I would assume sequencing in the raw could be a bit tedious. I suppose you can start with a rough midi from the notation program and refine it.

I've never used soundfonts either.

My soundcard has support for soundfonts and I was tinkering with at one point but I didn't have much success.

The key thing too, is that I'll want to generate a digital audio file from that captures the rendition I worked on.

If I give the midi alone, other people might still hear poor quality instruments if that's what they have.

I would love to find a way to generate this file without having to play through my speakers first only to capture it again with a mic.

Abyway, I'll look into the REAPER.

Could Cakewalk Sonar be useful as well?

Does anyone use it? Is it good?

That's why you'd use a sequencer to sample the files with soundfonts and then export them to a digital audio format, instead of using your sound card's soundfont support. Either way, you have to have a single GM-compatible soundfont for the soundcard—I think.

Cakewalk SONAR is a professional sequencer, so yes, it'd do the job—probably better than REAPER. From what I've seen of it, looks pretty good, but I barely have any experience with it.

Also, I'm not sure either supports soundfonts natively, so if you want to use free (or commercial/shareware) soundfonts and they don't, you could grab the free SynthFont VST plugin. It works quite well in my (limited) experiences. SynthFont home page

Could Cakewalk Sonar be useful as well?

Does anyone use it? Is it good?

I use Sonar Home Studio XL (version 6). Home Studio is like a cut-down version of the full Sonar program, but it costs less and still lets you have unlimited MIDI tracks. It comes with a general MIDI synth called "TTS-1" which has hundreds of sounds, which are probably better than what you get with Finale's soft synth (not 100% sure on this - I don't have Finale). Because I have the "XL" version, I also got Garritan Pocket Orchestra, which is a cut down version of the full Personal Orchestra library (about 1/3rd of the samples). The Pocket Orchestra samples generally sound much better than the TTS-1 sounds.

I also have REAPER, but I don't use it very often. The main things it is lacking are a staff-view (which Sonar HS has) and good piano-roll features. Apart from that it is great for its price. By the way, if you get the Sonar 7 web trial, note that it has more features than Sonar Home Studio (HS is still at version 6).

SynthFont home page

This is a great, free, tool to play MIDI files with soundfonts, and you can then save the audio as a .wav, .mp3, or several other file types, without needing to do much. Then you can go to sf2midi there and pick and choose your favorite free soundfonts. All of this is free and if you find the right soundfonts you can really create something that sounds pretty good, no sound card required. Here's an example of a piece I made using this procedure after getting the midi from Sibelius. Tempest. Disclaimer; not all the fonts here are good, but some of them are, it's just an example of the results.

Vienna Symphonic Library :)

The closest thing to hiring an orchestra.