Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth No Longer an Option for MIDI Devices

[Peach]

I used to have the option to select the general Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth as a MIDI device for the few years I used Cakewalk by BandLab (on Windows 10).  Recently, this option disappeared and I thought it was of my own doing because of some audio driver troubles.  I have since resolved the audio driver issue and I also have added Cakewalk to another computer entirely (running Windows 11), and in both cases, the GS MIDI just will not appear.  Was this phased out or am I doing something wrong?  I would like to use it for certain projects.  Thank you.

[OutrageProductions]

It was phased out as it is no longer supported by Win11, and latest builds of Win10.

TTS-1 is your best option for GM sounds.

[John Vere]

It was from like 1985 or something and possibly the very worst of what midi sound generated devices have to offer.

Nobody will miss it.

I think it was 8 bit. Sort of like an MP3  at 32kbps. 

 

[John Maar]

5 hours ago, Peach said:

I used to have the option to select the general Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth as a MIDI device for the few years I used Cakewalk by BandLab (on Windows 10).  Recently, this option disappeared and I thought it was of my own doing because of some audio driver troubles.  I have since resolved the audio driver issue and I also have added Cakewalk to another computer entirely (running Windows 11), and in both cases, the GS MIDI just will not appear.  Was this phased out or am I doing something wrong?  I would like to use it for certain projects.  Thank you.

I have been using the free VirtualMIDISynth by CoolSoft as a replacement for MS's GS synth for many years. It's terrific. I actually never noticed that the MS synth disappeared. 😄Don't let the Windows warning from the install bother you, it's legit. Just run anyways. I just installed the latest update, and that file is fine, it just doesn't have MS certification, which doesn't bother me for something that's free.

One thing I did learn is that the soundfont file you choose all gets loaded into RAM, so choosing a really large soundfont consumes a lot of RAM, which can be a problem on older systems with limited RAM, especially 8 GB systems. There are a number of free soundfonts listed at the bottom of the web page. I've settled on the Arachno soundfont for it's balance of sound quality vs. size, but you can try others to see which works best for your type of music.

VirtualMIDISynth

Edited December 12, 2023 by John Maar

[Peach]

14 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

It was phased out as it is no longer supported by Win11, and latest builds of Win10.

TTS-1 is your best option for GM sounds.

Do you mean that it was phased out of Cakewalk?  Because both Windows 10 and Windows 11 still use GS by default.  I've only wanted it to verify the note data being entered when I'm not using my external sound bank.  I come from the 90s MIDI era (SoundBlaster AWE32!), so I'm very used to it.

8 hours ago, John Maar said:

I have been using the free VirtualMIDISynth by CoolSoft as a replacement for MS's GS synth for many years. It's terrific. I actually never noticed that the MS synth disappeared. 😄Don't let the Windows warning from the install bother you, it's legit. Just run anyways. I just installed the latest update, and that file is fine, it just doesn't have MS certification, which doesn't bother me for something that's free.

One thing I did learn is that the soundfont file you choose all gets loaded into RAM, so choosing a really large soundfont consumes a lot of RAM, which can be a problem on older systems with limited RAM, especially 8 GB systems. There are a number of free soundfonts listed at the bottom of the web page. I've settled on the Arachno soundfont for it's balance of sound quality vs. size, but you can try others to see which works best for your type of music.

VirtualMIDISynth

Yeah, it seems it disappeared from Cakewalk builds and not Windows.  I don't know why it was important to stop supporting it when it's probably the use of extremely little code.  It seems I can go with VirtualMIDISynth when I'm ready to incorporate music tools into the new laptop.  It seems to allow for many SF2 soundfonts, but I don't see anything new in Cakewalk's devices.  This is only useful if it can be seen by Cakewalk.

Thank you all for the quick responses.

[User 905133]

11 hours ago, Peach said:

I don't know why it was important to stop supporting it . . . .

There have been several threads about this.  Some of them should come up if you type "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" into the forum search box (with the quotation marks so it looks for the phrase, not all the individual words.  Let me see if I can find them.

Update: Try this search link. I forgot to mention, if the search just does the current topic, switch it to "Everywhere" or "The whole forum," or however its worded.

Edited December 13, 2023 by User 905133

[Peach]

2 hours ago, User 905133 said:

There have been several threads about this.  Some of them should come up if you type "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" into the forum search box (with the quotation marks so it looks for the phrase, not all the individual words.  Let me see if I can find them.

Update: Try this search link. I forgot to mention, if the search just does the current topic, switch it to "Everywhere" or "The whole forum," or however its worded.

For some reason when I used forum search, I didn't get any of these results before.  I may have been looking through the wrong area at the time.  Regardless, it seems that the post Lee Jackson made received an answer that explains what happened.   In fact, Lee's reasoning is the same as mine: a quick and dirty way of prototyping a work in progress.  I installed VirtualMIDISynth and put in a GM2 soundfont, and it's not doing anything for Cakewalk, so it doesn't help my cause.  I'll look into TTS-1.

Edit: TTS-1 is for Sonar users and/or special versions of Cakewalk.  That option seems to be out for me.  Even if it's legacy or whatever, I really don't understand the need to purge the only built-in MIDI device.

Edited December 13, 2023 by Peach
Option not very feasible...

[57Gregy]

11 hours ago, Peach said:

TTS-1 is for Sonar users and/or special versions of Cakewalk.

It works fine for me with the latest version of Cakewalk by Bandlab... and SONAR Home Studio 6 and Music Creator 6 and SONAR X3.
How are you using it?

Edited December 13, 2023 by 57Gregy
additional words.

[57Gregy]

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

[Peach]

14 minutes ago, 57Gregy said:

It works fine for me with the latest version of Cakewalk by Bandlab... and SONAR Home Studio 6 and Music Creator 6 and SONAR X3.
How are you using it?

I looked up extensively how to install that and it seems it comes with paid versions of software.  Does it instead have something to do with Melodyne?  That's the only thing not installed from the Cakewalk by BandLab set here, I think.  If I can be directed to TTS-1 for download legally, that would be great.  Thank you.

[57Gregy]

It has been provided for free with every Cakewalk program for 15 years or so.
Go to Utilities at the top, click on Cakewalk Plug-in Manager.
It should be listed under DX Instruments. It may be possible that you deselected its download when you got CbB? 

 

[OutrageProductions]

14 minutes ago, 57Gregy said:

It has been provided for free with every Cakewalk program for 15 years or so.
Go to Utilities at the top, click on Cakewalk Plug-in Manager.
It should be listed under DX Instruments. It may be possible that you deselected its download when you got CbB? 

Just beat me to it @57Gregy!

Unless something went drastically wrong with your download & install, TTS1 should be available. 

[Peach]

1 hour ago, 57Gregy said:

It has been provided for free with every Cakewalk program for 15 years or so.
Go to Utilities at the top, click on Cakewalk Plug-in Manager.
It should be listed under DX Instruments. It may be possible that you deselected its download when you got CbB? 

 

 

1 hour ago, OutrageProductions said:

Just beat me to it @57Gregy!

Unless something went drastically wrong with your download & install, TTS1 should be available. 

Thank you!  It does work.  I just never use that part of the software because all of my equipment is external.  I used the wavetable synth only for proof of concept and prototyping.  Now, this isn't the best solution because it doesn't allow for switching over as easily as a device switch, but I'll make it work for me.

[OutrageProductions]

@Peach; while not of extraordinary quality, the sounds available in TTS1 are far superior to the MS GM wavetable, and map directly to any standard MIDI file, with program changes and all.

Have fun!

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Peach said:

I just never use that part of the software because all of my equipment is external.  I used the wavetable synth only for proof of concept and prototyping.

None of your hardware synths have a GM mode? Or is it that you need something to use when away from the studio?

[Peach]

1 hour ago, OutrageProductions said:

@Peach; while not of extraordinary quality, the sounds available in TTS1 are far superior to the MS GM wavetable, and map directly to any standard MIDI file, with program changes and all.

Have fun!

So far, it seems I need to map each channel individually, so any older GM content would need to be updated if reused.  But that's a small inconvenience in the big picture, so I'm not worried.

11 minutes ago, David Baay said:

None of your hardware synths have a GM mode? Or is it that you need something to use when away from the studio?

It's something for when I need to generate a concept on the fly without the need to have everything set up externally or to edit from an existing work for a purely visual presentation by notation while the audio is actually an MP3.  I tend to do rather unorthodox projects.

[David Baay]

8 minutes ago, Peach said:

So far, it seems I need to map each channel individually, so any older GM content would need to be updated if reused.

Ctrl+A to select everything and then hold Ctrl to while changing the Output port on one of the MIDI tracks to the TTS-1 to re-assign them all. Whatever channel setup was working with the GS Wavetable synth should work the same with TTS-1.

Also, if you uncheck all physical OUTs in MIDI Devices (or none are available because everything is disconnected or powered down), TTS-1 will load automatically and all tracks will be assigned to it when opening a .MID file in CbB.

[Peach]

41 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Ctrl+A to select everything and then hold Ctrl to while changing the Output port on one of the MIDI tracks to the TTS-1 to re-assign them all. Whatever channel setup was working with the GS Wavetable synth should work the same with TTS-1.

Also, if you uncheck all physical OUTs in MIDI Devices (or none are available because everything is disconnected or powered down), TTS-1 will load automatically and all tracks will be assigned to it when opening a .MID file in CbB.

Ah, there we go!  New Instrument does the trick with the Ctrl-A method, which now seems to be a better method than trying to add a New Track with the New Instrument's being TTS-1.  Both ways, pressing Play once to load the patch data and then stopping and playing again seems to do the trick for this as an alternate way.  Thank you all!

[Anders Svensson]

On 12/12/2023 at 5:43 AM, John Vere said:

It was from like 1985 or something and possibly the very worst of what midi sound generated devices have to offer.

Nobody will miss it.

I think it was 8 bit. Sort of like an MP3  at 32kbps. 

 

I sure miss it! It's always been a native fallback solution for me. I guess there's not much we can do if there's no OS-support, but as a retro-guy, I'm sad.

[Mark Shackelford]

On 12/13/2023 at 4:08 PM, David Baay said:

Ctrl+A to select everything and then hold Ctrl to while changing the Output port on one of the MIDI tracks to the TTS-1 to re-assign them all. Whatever channel setup was working with the GS Wavetable synth should work the same with TTS-1.

Also, if you uncheck all physical OUTs in MIDI Devices (or none are available because everything is disconnected or powered down), TTS-1 will load automatically and all tracks will be assigned to it when opening a .MID file in CbB.

Thanks!

I upgraded Cakewalk last night (been using it for over a decade) and my sounds went away. I never could figure out TTS-1 but now it's working! Did I ever tell you you're my hero?

Thanks again!

Mark

 

[David Baay]

Glad to help.