Simple midi player

[jkoseattle]

I recently switched from a Yamaha electronic piano to a simpler midi controller because the key action is better and I wanted pitch wheels. However, this keyboard doesn't have on-board synths like the Yamaha did, so the only way I can play it is to have CbB open with a piano patch loaded. Which would be fine, except I'm also working with a memory-intensive animation application and sometimes a photo editor... so if CbB s open, I'm running into RAM collisions and thing like that. 

Does anyone know of a simple low RAM freebie app I can run in the background all the time just so I can play the keyboard and actually hear a piano? It doesn't need to be a DAW, I just want to be able to make sound without having to fire up CbB every time.

[TheMaartian]

Maybe the free SAVIHost will work for you. You copy the SAVIHost.exe file to the directory your VI is in, and rename it to your VI's name. Then just run the .EXE standalone.

https://www.hermannseib.com/english/savihost.htm

I used this solution for years, until I found Gig Performer. Not free, but awesome also for studio use. I created a rackspace for each VI I wanted standalone access to.

https://gigperformer.com/

Although not exactly what you're asking for, also check out the CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth. Much better than the Windows default. I use it with the Arachno soundfont. It's nice and small. Just be careful about which soundfont you pick, since the whole thing gets loaded into RAM at startup.

https://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth

Edited February 7, 2020 by John Maar

[David Baay]

Since the main burden on system resources of running a soft synth is due to the processing and memory requirements of the synth plugin itself, using a different host is unlikely to significantly reduce the overall CPU load or memory footprint.

As a point of reference, Cakewalk with TruePianos running with a WASAPI buffer of 3ms takes up less than 200MB and about 8-10% CPU while playing  (realtime or existing MIDI playback) on my crummy i5 laptop with the UI minimized to the taskbar to remove the graphical load.  TTS-1 takes up only about half that - 100MB RAM, and 5-6% CPU.