MIDI mapping

I don't know if anyone can help but advice would be gratefully received.

I can download and listen to members' midi files, presumably "scored" properly, the different instruments sounding. I can also listen to finale orchestral files thanks to a freebie file-opener.

But when I compose (sequencer) with Microsoft midi instruments of which 16 are available, they all come out with the single sound of a piano. When I use the sequencer with VSTis or its integral sampler using wavs, the correct sounds emerge.

Looking at Control Panel/Sounds/ I see that I have "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth" supposedly feeding a Roland Sound Canvas sample set.

My diagnosis is that I'm missing a midi mapper of some sort. Does this sound about right?

I looked on help and while I can understand the words individually (!), strung together, they're heavy weather. Whoever wrote the help might as well have written it in assembler for all the good it's doing! It might indeed be assembler but without the RH marginal comments!

If the lack of a mapper is the trouble, can anyone recommend where I get one? It has to be easy to install rather than free/cheap, and not affect future plans for Cubase (or something)/gigastudio (latter running on an independent computer).

Thanks.
M

There are not 16 General MIDI instruments available as standard, there are 128. 16 is the number of available channels. Are you leaving the channels unpatched or something?

You're going to have to provide a little more information. Do you have any alternatives besides Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth? Is your card Soundfont enabled? What exactly are you doing to patch each channel?

I'm also moving this to Software and Hardware where it is more at home.

Thank you.

In fact, your reply led me down a different line of investigation.

Apologies for troubling you but it has yielded the answer.

Cheers,

M