OK. Finally bought bandstand...review

ok folks..

thanks for all the help and advice so far.
i went and got bandstand...

for what i needed it seems to work perfectly well.

pros : the immediacy is fantastic. load in a midi file and get a good solid reproduction of how it was meant to sound. works flawlessly as a VSTi in cubase SX. swap and change instruments really easily. the drum kits instantly play back as it ws meant to be. i think the main saving here is time time time! it instantly sounds ok.

cons. : when i sayinstantly sounds ok. i mean just that. its ok sounding. not amazingly awesomely great sounding, just ok. but dont get me wrong. even "ok" is an achievement for most midi files and its a great basis to start from. i find then with minimal tweaking i can get most of the instruments to sound cool.

guitars sounds : i never use them but they seem to sound better than normal soundcards.

bass sounds. : not bad at all. i use them in conjunction with a kontakt bass patch i have and the overall result is quite a deep warm bass sound

drums. : not bad. especially since all you do is just load the file and play. the onboard reverb and EQ settings really REALLY help here and allow you to create a way better mix with all instruments especially drums.

key sounds : ok. some are really crappy. im dissapointed wit the glockenspiel and music box. i still have to load my Kontat musi box samples separately. vibraphone sounds pretty weak to my ears too. pianos / keys are ok, not bad not brilliant.

strings : NOT GOOD! definitely not good. pizzicato is ok, but that always is its very easy to get right. tremolo strings ar epractically unusable IMO. really "midi" sounding. very cheap and cheesy. dissapointing.

brass : absolutely horrible. totally useless. but then again mid brass always is. i really wasnt expecting anything better. I still use a Reason refill i bought years ago acalled Brit Horns for brass, IMO its way ahead of the rest for getting that soul/funk kind of brass sound. its still NOTHING like the real thing but its pretty good. brass is the one element of backing tracks that midi really cannot fulfil yet... maybe in 20 years eh?

am i glad i bought it? absolutely. very useful. saves me loads of time getting a track together. for the price its well worth it IMO. i still need to use other packages (reason, addictive drums, kontakt) but thats fine this takes care of everything else and the editability with reverb/eqs per channel/eqs on the master mix mean you can get some good sounds going real quickly... just dont buy it for the strings or brass..!

 

I think most of us would endorse all that, Doezer. I use it with Band In A Box when I don't want to bother turning on my mixing desk, Roland Fantom X, etc. and I just want to sketch out ideas. What a pity NI have no plans for it - four years and no developments, not even some added/improved samples.

 

yep, it´s a shame !
I regret I buyed it in the past.

KB