I am having trouble clearly hearing examples that play more than one note at the same time, i.e., chords. There is nothing wrong with EarMaster Pro or my computer, it's just that if there is a way to improve the sound quality it would be a big help so if there is a way to do it, I'd like to know what it is.
The only two "Midi out" devices that I see in "Tools...Program Settings...MIDI devices...Midi out" are 1) Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth" and 2) Microsoft Midi Mapper". To my ears, they both sound the same regardless of which I choose. The sounds are accurate but rather thin without much overtone. (Am using the "0 - Piano 1" Piano MIDI instrument on channel 1 with an attack of 127.
I use EarMasterPro on a WinXp laptop using a decent but not great pair of noise cancelling earbuds.
Suggestions very much appreciated on what can be done to improve the piano sound, given that I need to use earbuds.
Am a musical hobbiest-- played piano (musical comedy) at theater camps during summers while in college. Many years of private piano lessons. Currently taking private jazz piano lessons.
If you have good sounding VST instruments, you could use them with EarMaster but it requires some tweaking:
1) You will need to have a VST host (a DAW or a stand alone VST host. Some free ones show up when you google these terms)
2) Then you will need a little program to route EarMaster's MIDI output to the VST host. I have tried both LoopBe1 and MIDI Yoke, they're free and do the job just great.
If you want to use a standalone softsynth (like Kore Player, or similar), you can just skip point 1) and simply find a MIDI routing program.
I took your advice and installed KorePlayer and LoopBe1 on my WinXp SP2 laptop. It works perfectly, and the sound is now significantly better. Thank you so much! The only problem I encountered was that it took a bit of trial and error to discover in Kore Player that after selecting "Piano/Keys", "Grand Piano", "Sample Based", and "Compilation Vol. 1", it was necessary to double click on "Dubplate Piano" in order for that sound to take effect.
It is much more satisfying and educational to use EarMasterPro with the better quality piano sounds.
Thanks again
Am a musical hobbiest-- played piano (musical comedy) at theater camps during summers while in college. Many years of private piano lessons. Currently taking private jazz piano lessons.
This thread is where I learned about loopbe1 so please excuse me for going a little off-topic. I've got loopbe1 working with sfz+ and savihost, which allows me to load soundfonts. This works fine with EarMaster, and I can get much better quality instruments this way than are built into Windows 7. However, when I load a General Midi soundfont, other programs like PowerTab and GuitarPro don't play all the instruments. They play the one instrument that is selected in sfz+. So I'm wondering if there is a real software replacement for Microsoft's abysmal "GS Wavetable Synth". (I didn't have any luck with KorePlayer.)
(NB: I do have a Creative X-FI, and that's out because it's very prone to static when using larger soundfonts, at least until all the notes get played at a variety of volumes. It was frustration with this hardware solution that led me to this thread.)
If you are on Windows, you can try Viena which is a Soundfont loader/editor, and download the Fluid GM soundfont which complies with the GM standard that EarMaster uses. Both Viena (by Synthfont, not to be confused with Vienna with 2 "n") and the Fluid GM soundfont are free and work great.
Thanks for the tip! Actually, it is mainly the SyFonOne program by the same author that I'm interested in. It is able to use loopbe1 as its input and thus play PowerTab and Guitar Pro using soundfonts, with those two programs using loopbe1 as their output. Very nice!
That said, I've since found that sfz+ and savihost are very convenient to use with EarMaster, and I will probably continue to use them instead of SyFonOne for EarMaster purposes. Here's why. I made a soundfont with high quality piano, nylon, and steel string guitars in the usual General MIDI numbered slots, 0, 24, and 25, and that's all it contains. I load it into sfz+, and I can switch between these instruments very easily by clicking a button in the sfz+ window. This is quicker and more convenient than using the Earmaster UI to switch instruments. The closest thing in Earmaster is the piano rendering with its MIDI instrument button, but that cycles through all the GM instuments, and there are 23 between the piano and guitars, which means a lot of clicking, even though my soundfont lacks those 23 instruments. It appears sfz+ removes the missing instruments, so there are just the three, the piano and two guitars, which makes it a lot more pleasant to cycle through the available instruments. I guess I could make a soundfont that has the instruments numbered 0, 1, 2, but I guess Earmaster would still display them as "Piano 1", "Piano 2", and "Piano 3", which would be kind of confusing. Also, Earmaster should probably use a dropdown list, which would allow direct selection of the desired instrument in addition to stepping through them one by one.
Anyway, using high quality instruments via soundfonts has improved my Earmaster experience tremendously. Supplying high quality instruments OOTB would have to be my number one suggestion for a future version, as it's difficult to put the pieces together as an end user. It really does make a difference, as the "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" is truly horrible, and the training is definitely enhanced by the better quality sounds.
I totally agree with the sound quality issue, and many other users also do. The thing is, the quality of the sounds depends a lot on the soundcard you have, the OS, and other things. Most setups have very low-quality synths generating the sounds in EarMaster. Our aim is that all EarMaster users get the same well-sounding experience, and that will be taken care of
Yeah I was going to suggest something in the "Suggestions for EM6" that maybe having an Ear Master VSTi or VST to load into DAW's like ableton, fruity loops, reaper, protools, logic or whatever would be good.
But yea.. hah.. I hadn't even thought of trying MIDI-yoke! http://www.midiox.com/
(the link for anyone interested)
OH, and here is the one for LoopBe1 http://nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html
(I have no experience with it, but gonna give it a shot)
I used MIDI Yoke before, but I don't think it works with Vista/7. LoopBe1 is neat and small, and works with Vista/7.
For Mac OSX, MIDI routing is already part of the OS, so you simply need to activate the IAC device in the Audio/MIDI setup of OSX and route that between EM and your sound program (DAW, Softsynth, etc.).
