confusion about sound center

Hello, post #1. Loved working with MC3, found it preferable to Magix, and at the time MC3 was one of the only affordable product other than N-track that would do 24-bits.

So, I've recently installed MC5. The reason I picked it up was for the Drum module, Studio Instruments Drums.

So naturally, I can't get into it. I think there's something wrong with the installation, though no errors were indicated.

Question is: Studio Instr. Drums would be in Cakewalk Sound Center, right? Problem is, the only option I have in my Start menu for CSC is to uninstall it. There's no way to start the damn program. I don't see any way to get into it via MC5.

What's the deal, any insight? Looks like it will be just the thing to take my fake drumming to the next level.

Mike - when you used MC3 did you use any of the softsynths like Edirol VSC? if so, SI drums and Sound Center are the same thing in that regard - they're softsynths you insert from the INSERT>SOFTSYNTH menu options. you should work thru tutorial #8 in the help files to help you with understanding more about softsynths if you haven't used them before.

if it is SFZ, you can't load any non-Sound Center SFZs into it. you can only load the sounds that come with it - it's not editable. at least not to my knowledge

The Rebuttal:

This was posted by Brian Desmond from Cakewalk, in relation to questions that were asked about Sound Center!

Hey guys,

Loading external SFZ's is currently unsupported. If you have the programs, sfz's and multisamples in the right place, CSC will load 'em, but programs won't be assigned to a category in the browser and the user knobs and buttons won't do anything so it doesn't really work, and I don't recommend it.

That question has been answered. Of course the programs are proprietary, but, the samples aren't.

Studio Drums is also a SFZ player! However, you can't play any other SFZ files in it, nor can you play it's files in any other player. It has nothing to do with being a proprietary format, but, is likely based on having the proper opcodes. You also can't play SD's .wav files in anything else but the player. Tried it!

Studio drums only has a single sound set. I did my home work long ago being that I've had the Studio Instruments package for over an year now. I located the sample folder and saw first hand, how many samples that actually comes with each of the SI players.

The kits you refer to are nothing more than variations of the same samples, by simply changing the tuning and compression levels for each listed kit. You are not getting various types of samples in the kits. Perhaps you've noticed, that there aren't any percussion samples like bongo's, conga's, triangles, shakers, etc...?

Studio Instruments, wasn't designed for professional usage being that it's listed under Beginner recording. It was designed to be fun and cool to watch the animated UI, more than anything. It is what it is, and nothing more.

Kine you might be right about there only being one set of samples, but there are several samples of each kind, and there are electronic sounds as well as accoustic sounds, however theu chose to make this work, there are many distictively different sounding drum kits to chose from. one set of sample does not mean that there are not multiple kits. Samples are just that samples and can sound different. So you call it a Tomato ,and i'll call it a tomato .. er well you know what i mean.

Robo... I don't want you to think I'm splitting hairs or anything, because I'm not. I just want folks to know what they're getting and not be misinformed. I'm a massive sampler user and have used hardware samplers for a number of years and have done extensive programming and sound design over the years. I have always obsessed over drum samples and used various tricks to get a different sound out of hardware drum machines that had limited sounds to choose from. These machines often weren't expandable with new samples. Paying $500 or more for another machine in order to have newer sounds that really wasn't all that different, was out of the question. This lead to some creative ways to get the most mileage of of my $500 drum machine [back in the day] that only had [47]samples to choose from.

Common tricks were to use tuning, overdrive, compression, reverb, eq, circuit bending and anything else I could think of. Tuning a drum sample extremely high or low can give a drastically different sound from the original. Studio drums doesn't have any electronic samples of any kind. If you investigate further [which I usually do before I make statements about things] you'll find, that what sounds electronic, is nothing more than the acoustic snare, kick drum, and hat samples being Tuned extremely high [or low for the kicks] beyond it's natural range which makes it sound electronic. And By applying various amounts of compression and reverb to the various programs, you achieve a different color or sound. It's kinda primitive, given the power of computers and the fact .wav files are native to windows. The samples aren't proprietary, so there's no reason for not including a decent range of various types of drum samples rather than simply mimic them with tunning! But, S.I.D's, was made for fun rather than extensive music production.

CW, has a habit of limiting certain plug-ins or making them cripple-ware, because they're limited in what they will load or do. Even though studio instruments and Sound center are sfz players... CW, doesn't allow you to load external fonts into them. CW, blocked your ability to use the Groove synth in any MC version for some pointless reason. It can only be used in SHS or Sonar as another example of this.

Have you investigated or looked for Studio drums, sample folder which should be located in the shared plug-ins folder? How about a little experiment? Choose any kit that you want. Then, check the tuning settings for each drum and set them @ 0 or midway. Disable the compressor and reverb. Do this for every kit that you choose. You will then discover the secret of SD.

Fin...