The Dink Network

Hey, group. How's it going?

Hey, I put a whole lot of work on my music files last year. The new Noteworthy composer version that I got, however, reduced a lot of my music to petty cheap, sound-off type music. When one listens to the .wmv file that I saved them under, the .mid files that play in Noteworthy can't compare!

I think that this entire time, a few people have downloaded my music and felt that they can't use it for their d-mod because of it's mediocre cheap sounds. How do I stop Noteworthy from ruining my music? I mean, what can I do to save the old sounds and all? the Noteworthy Composer site will not allow me to download the 1st Version, the version where I originally made these files.

Any affirming answers is what will help me update my files.

p.s. For those of you who have known about my music files, it seems that the few times I bring up my music, I only talk about these and haven't made anything else. I'm sorry I haven't had any new work after this one and only pack that I made. Currently, I am working on a new "Victory March" and hope to showcase it in the next few months alongside some other work.

Are you sure they're not just losing quality because, well, they're being converted to .mid? I thought some of the songs in your midi packs were great, but if those are in fact poor versions... Wow.

Instantly release more music.

I thought some of the songs in your midi packs were great, but if those are in fact poor versions... Wow.

I'll second that.

Heh heh, here's the thing with MIDI and NoteWorthy. From what I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong), NoteWorthy is simply a MIDI creation tool; a composer - hence the name. It doesn't control the quality of the sound that comes out, your sound card does that, especially when we're talking MIDI. Literally every single sound card out there is going to have slight (and some not so slight) differences in quality and sound.

So this means that a MIDI I compose that I think sounds awesome on my computer could sound very poor to you if I were to email it you. This would be because we have different sound cards and mine is better quality than yours, and plays MIDIs with higher quality sound. Try listening to them on other computers; I may be wrong.

Also, another reason could just be because you're making MIDIs, and quite frankly, MIDI quality pales in comparison to 'real' audio files such as WMV and MP3. This is because MIDI is completely digital, whereas other audio files (WMV & MP3) are most likely recorded from real instruments using high-quality recording gear.

By the way, if you're looking for the first version of NoteWorthy, I still have my trial version that I've never bothered to upgrade, simply because I like it and don't see the point in upgrading as it does everything I want it to do fine, and I'd be more than happy to zip it up and email it to you (I've lost the original setup executable), it seems to work fine if you just extract it to your hard drive. But I'd recommend just staying with NoteWorthy 2, because (in theory) it'd just be better, due to the fact that it is the second, and probably improved, version, and I really don't think that NoteWorthy 2 is going to make your MIDIs sound crap, because once they're exported to MIDI, NoteWorthy has no control over the file, it's all your computer and sound card. And, I assume you have a full, paid version of it?

I seem to have rambled quite a bit, but I do hope you can make some sense from that and it helps.

For an analogy, MIDI files are like digital sheet music. The GS wavetable synth in windows is pretty poor. For better instruments you'd need an external General MIDI device like the Roland Sound Canvas series, or a Yamaha TG series device.

DD, saying that Midi pales in comparison to audio files is like saying that MS Paint pales in comparison to Crysis. They're two entirely different things. The quality of your sound depends entirely on your hardware.

Thanks Scratcher and marpro for your guy's kind words. That's extremely sweet of you. However, I actually was able to find out where I went wrong and realized that it wasn't the media files; what you downloaded and heard is likely the version it should be.

What happened was I tried opening the .mid files with NWC2 and playing them on that program. The problem that I realized is that Noteworthy was not familiar with any notation imputted into the .mid, for .mid is not an extension for notation file like Noteworthy or Finale is. So, it had to translate the music produced by the wave file to create it's own notation. When it did that, the final product contained a lot of missing dynamics and made-up notes; I'm guessing that the program wasn't made to be able to translate crescendos, accelerando's, staccato's and such from any given sound of music at the absence of an already existing notation. So, when I played these products back in NWC2, the music was bland and liveless. I thought at first that this is what the music will actually sound like regardless of what program is used to play it. Then, I dragged the .mid's into Window's Media Player and learned that that wasn't the case: I received the quality of music that these files originally had. Complicated (right?? ) problem solved!!

My only problem now is that on this new laptop, I often have a hard time hearing the bass, but I think I'll save this discussion for Hewlett-Packard's forum regarding technical issues.

Thanks again for all of your guy's response. *hugs*

~~~~~~~~LC~~~~~~~~

Yeah, NoteWorthy sucks at importing MIDIs; I really don't understand it. It can do all the dynamic stuff and everything when you're composing, but when you import, it just turns into a mess. Especially when you're importing pieces in 5/8 time.
Glad you figured it out, though, I thought you meant the MIDIs just sounded poor.