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From: sandell@ferret.Berkeley.EDU (Greg Sandell)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Compact Disks with Musical Instruments on them
Message-ID: <6184@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 9 Apr 90 19:29:05 GMT
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Recently I purchased four of the compact disks in the McGill University
Master Samples series.  For those of you who don't know them, they
include an individual recording of every instrument of the orchestra
playing every note in its available range.  `Non-clasical' sounds
are available as well, such as Rock drums and guitar chords.

I am also thinking of buying discs from the Pro Sonus series.  From
what I know of them, they have similar `classical' sounds, although
they have recorded only every fourth note of the available scale
for each instrument.  They are obviously targeted more exclusively
to the needs of Digital Sampler keyboard users, rather than
those with research interests.  

Has anybody else used any of the ProSonus disks?  I would be interested
in hearing your evaluation of them.

I have been doing spectral analyses of entire instruments in the 
McGill series, and, having seen tremendous note-to-note differences,
am convinced that a strategy of recording only every fourth note
is a real error.  As an example, when english horn goes from F4 to
F#4 (sounding pitches) there is dramatic change in fingering from
all keys closed to all keys open (roughly).  This corresponds to
a dramatic change in spectral envelope between these two tones.
Clearly such timbral discontinuities are critical to the
essential character of the instrument.  I am not a Sampling Keyboard
user, but it strikes me that just because the current memory
capacities of these devices only allow the sampling of every fourth
note, it is extremely shortsighted to go through the trouble of
recording such tones at great expense and releasing them on CDs when
it's only a matter of time before memory is so cheap that the current
limitations of Sampling Keyboards will be a joke.

Here are some brief evaluations of some of the instruments.  As you
can see, the playing quality is not consistent; I think that this
is a major drawback in the McGill series.  I hear that the current
issue of CMJ contains a review of the McGill tones, but I haven't
seen it yet.

1. Excellent tone quality and evenness of tone productions in the
performances of:
	violin bowed vibrato
	double bass bowed
	flute non-vibrato
	English Horn
	tenor trombone
	tuba
2. Less satisfactory tone quality or evenness:
	viola non-vibrato (very scratchy)
	Bassoon (weak in mid-high registers; very high notes omitted)
	french horn (the user's manual does not describe the mike placement
		of these tones; I suspect that the mike was place right by
		the bell, which may not effectively capture the sound we
		usually hear in this instrument, since the bells do not
		face the listener.)
	Bb clarinet (very `hooty')
3. Poor tone quality, very uneven
	All trumpets (most notes not even recognizable as a trumpet)
4. E2 missing from tuba series; A#1 missing from 9' grand piano, right 
	pedal depressed (volume 9)
5. celesta recording is very noisy (volume 9)


****************************************************************
* Greg Sandell (sandell@ils.nwu.edu)                           *
* Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University *
****************************************************************