I've found at newsgroup 'alt.music.midi' a letter dealing with the
'Best Software Synthesizer'.  Is there anybody on-line who has
experience with that product?

Claus Kucher

 --- begin forwarded message from "alt.music.midi" ----

 Subject: Re: Best Software Synthesizer
 From:    seersys@aol.com (Seersys)

>  1.  What is the best software synthesizer on the market?

IMHO, Reality by Seer Systems is the best software synth.  It comes
with over 400 sounds, does five different types of synthesis, has a
General MIDI mode, has no noticeable delay, imports SoundFonts and wav
files, and works on any soundcard with native DirectSound driver.

Besides that, Reality v1.5 includes SeerMusic (http://www.seermusic.com),
a professional internet audio solution that lets you stream your
music, with your own unique patches including vocals.

Don't confuse this with consumer products like Beatnik.  SeerMusic
files are 44K and are not limited to wavetable synthesis.  Your
listeners can even create their own custom mixes.  And it works on
28.8 modems.

>  2.  How much does it cost?

Reality list at $495.  Street price is around $350.

>  3.  How much CPU overhead?

That's up to you.  You can assign Reality to use anywhere from 20 - 80%
of your CPU.  Typically, less CPU means lower polyphony.  But there are
ways around that.

>  4.  How does it compare to ... say, a Soundblaster AWE 64 Gold?

Seer System, Inc. created the Wavesynth/WG for Creative.  The SB synth
is ok, as GM synths go, but Reality is a professional synthesizer with
the synthesis power of thousands of dollars worth of hardware synths.
It's like comparing a Sound Canvas to a fully loaded K2500 w/sampling
option, a DX7 and a Nord Lead rolled into one.

If you want a great sounding professional synth, that integrates
easily with any Win '95 OR Win '98 sequencer, can coexists with your
digital Audio program on a single hard drive, and doesn't cost a ton of
money, check out Reality at http://www.seersystems.com/

Ted Seer

 --- end forwarded message ----

 [ There might be more than a little prejudice in this letter, since
 [ it is written by the vendor about his own product.  Jody remarks,
 [ "For $350 it better be very very good!"  -- Robbie
 [
 [ For what its worth, I checked out the website.  There are screen
 [ images of various features of the synthesizer as well as a bunch
 [ of Mpeg encoded audio clips.  I downloaded several and found them
 [ "interesting".  I'm not going to trade in my Roland Sound Canvas
 [ SC-55 just yet...   What I was not able to determine in my
 [ short browsing was whether or not this software synthesizer will
 [ allow the user to use their own ".WAV" samples as "oscillators".
 [ I was also unable to determine if arbitrary polyphony could
 [ be obtained if one was willing to send the computed WAV files
 [ to disk (at slower than real time) rather than at real time
 [ to a sound card.  If these two features were supported, this
 [ might allow realistic generation of orchestrion and street organ
 [ audio files directly from MIDI.   -- Jody