I'm disappointed as of now and am not sure where to go from here. I purchased VDrumline for $99. I have a Dell that came with Turtle Beach sound card installation which works well. There is no where to install, copy, or inport files to in the card. So I DL Maple Leaf and I realize I need reason, Kontakt/kompact, or giga studio which have a price range that does not suit. I talked to Jim at PASIC and it looked and sounded like, buy the product and go. GREAT!!! I purchased Sibelius at just over $300 from a local store. Pretty soon I'm going to be $600 or $700 in order to maintain proper drumline sounds in m notation software???

Where should I go from here? What shoulf I purchase/do?

Thanks,
Chauch

Chauch -
As you know, the Virtual Drumline sample library comes in two sample formats: GigaStudio, or Soundfont. In order to load these samples, you have to have a software sampler that can load one of these formats (Kompakt, Giga, Kontakt, Reason), or a soundcard that is soundfont compatible. I don't know much about the Turtle Beach soundcards, but I'm doubtful if they're compatible with soundfonts, as to my knowledge Creative Labs and Emu seem to be the companies that really embrace this format (soundfont). I always try to be as accomodating as possible in helping explain the system requirements, so I apologize if there was some sort of confusion... It sounds to me, like you may not have checked whether or not your soundcard was compatible prior to purchasing the library.

The good news is that you don't have to break the bank in order to use the sounds. Kompakt is a very good sampler and if you are an educator or student, you can pick it up for $99 from Tapspace. Considering that the Gigastudio program alone costs upward of $600 for the software (not including the GSIF formatted soundcard it requires), this is a pretty darn good deal.

Most users already have a notation program, so obviously you may be feeling the 'sting' of your sibelius purchase as well. For what it's worth, I can vouche for the fact that once you start learning your way around this stuff, it's an amazing investment.

Jim

Now I am not trying to be a jerk, but all over this website it says that you have to either have a sound font compatible soundcard or a program like reason or gigastudio or kompakt to make it work. It's all over the place. It's your fault if you didn't read that before you made your purchase.

Come on people, read before you go on a "I wasted my money" diatribe.

Sorry, had to get that out.

It might be worth mentioning on the page that the Kontakt Player that ships with Sibelius 3 will not load these files - it took me a while to figure that out.

This is true cflake, and we'll put up an announcement about that. Good point! It's a little confusing how Native Instruments names all these various (different, but related) products:

KONTAKT (the big sampler, 16 voices)
KOMPAKT (more of a player than an editor, 8 voices)
KONTAKT PLAYER SILVER (included with Sibelius 3)
KONTAKT PLAYER GOLD (available upgrade for Sib3 users)

With the Kontakt Players included with Sibelius, you aren't able to load in 3rd party libraries. You get whatever they give you. I should mention that there are a few sounds from Virtual Drumline that were licensed for use in the Sibelius GOLD Kontakt Player. It's only a few tenor velocities and a few tonal bass drum velocities (no snares, cymbals, rolls, effects, etc from VDrumline are included). So if you really want the realistic effect of Virtual Drumline, you'll have to load those sounds into a separate sampler.

jim