Soundcards rarely have their own synths anymore, since Microsoft included a software synth in windows. When using a controller keyboard with xtractor, if you are relying on the GM Wavetable Software Synth, then you are likely to experience a delay between playing the keys on the keyboard and the sound being heard through your PC speakers.

We provide two pieces of advice in this regard.

1. We recommend a decent keyboard such as the Yamaha E413 where you play the sounds from Xtractor through the keyboard. This ensures no latency and also provides a good number of Octaves so that you can follow the course fully.
2. You can generally use a Controller Keyboard with a MAC, as their Quicktime player provides a response with no perceptible delay.

Creative still do some cards with synths. My audigy has MIDI devices on it. I suspect they are software synths at the cards hardware level rather than a dedicated chip though, but they work fine with Xtractor.

Using MIDI-yoke and cubase (similar dektop sequencing application) and a GM sythn VST plugin, one could utilise the low latency of a sound cards AUDIO drivers. This means you direct the midi output of Xtractor into cubase and cubase then does the work of being the software synth, and as it uses WDM or ASIO drivers to do so, with a good soundcard it can out perform the slow arse chunk of code called Microsoft GS Wavetable.

It’s a roundabout way to get MIDI. But sound cards just don’t have MIDI dedicated synth chips anymore.

I hope this is helpful. Let us know if you have any thoughts we can share.

Best wishes,

Brian

By way of example, here's another app running on the same machine enumerating all the midi devices present (there's 8 midiyoke ones not 6 that I mentioned before):

C:\Users\Topdog\Documents\Projects\game2midi\src\Release>g2ghpro.exe
Set mode to 6 string guitar.

Input port #0: In From MIDI Yoke: 1
Input port #1: In From MIDI Yoke: 2
Input port #2: In From MIDI Yoke: 3
Input port #3: In From MIDI Yoke: 4
Input port #4: In From MIDI Yoke: 5
Input port #5: In From MIDI Yoke: 6
Input port #6: In From MIDI Yoke: 7
Input port #7: In From MIDI Yoke: 8
Input port #8: GR-55
Input port #9: USB MIDI Interface

Choose input port number: 1

Output port #0: Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth
Output port #1: Out To MIDI Yoke: 1
Output port #2: Out To MIDI Yoke: 2
Output port #3: Out To MIDI Yoke: 3
Output port #4: Out To MIDI Yoke: 4
Output port #5: Out To MIDI Yoke: 5
Output port #6: Out To MIDI Yoke: 6
Output port #7: Out To MIDI Yoke: 7
Output port #8: Out To MIDI Yoke: 8
Output port #9: GR-55
Output port #10: USB MIDI Interface

Choose output port number:
Ch^C
C:\Users\Topdog\Documents\Projects\game2midi\src\Release>

Came home and thought about alternative solutions, wasn't happy with them (mostly involved digging out an ancient AWE32 or AWE64 gold sound card and figuring out if I have enough bits to make a PC for it to sit in again, or whether I want to restart learning keyboard just yet and buy one with support for midi in synth playing).

Then wondered if there were alternatives to midi yoke and if so, whether they'd work. Did some searching, and it looks like this is the answer.

I found a few alternatives actually, but tried the first one that I thought would be worth trying, and it works a treat: LoopBe1 ( http://nerds.de/en/loopbe1.html )

This is a 'free for non-commercial use' version of the software, which only offers 1 port in / 1 port out for mapping, but that's all we need here.

So my chain looks like this:

roland gr55 guitar synth -> gigajam xtractor -> loopbe virtual midi port -> synthfont (a donateware sequencer supporting asio4all)

First attempt with this and my analysis at the end went from 3% to 57% - which is probably a fair score as I need to practice a whole lot more, I can hear my badness, it's that bad, so not just the software being harsh, and lag is almost non-existent now. It's going to be a huge help to be able to see by the analyser where I'm going wrong and need to adjust/practice to improve - so now it's working I guess I'll have to subscribe soon.

Well done! You are a dedicated researcher.

This conversation is timely as we are starting a development project that will include a VST solution in Xtractor for this very reason. We hope that this will help PC users who have controller keyboards, controller guitars such as the YouRockGuitar and electronic drum kits that only have MIDI out. Not having a quick GM soundsource means that you have latency and it would be great to have a solution that solves that.

Xtractor was developed for instruments with their own hardware GM synth, such as portable electronic keyboards, MIDI drums with GM. Increasingly users are relying on the PC to do everything and instrument manufacturers are expecting that.

This problem does n't exist with Apple users.

Will keep you posted on how that develops and hope to have an elegant integrated solution within a couple of months...after that is a new MAC Xtractor.

Great having you in our community

Best wishes,

Brian