realitive newness...

[mickomoo]

I'm just playing around with a freeware sequencer and whatever Vsts I can fine while crawling the internets... I was wondering though, what do people use (virtual instruments and sequencers) to produce higher quality music? I'm currently using mixcraft and kinda clinging to it because it's so easy to use and is cheap. Are there better similar alternatives or if I'm becoming more serious about this what should I look into?

[Rozovian]

This thread lists a lot of stuff, and this more recent one lists some too.

Personally, I enjoy Spectrasonics' Omnisphere despite it's memory hogging, and Native Instruments' stuff are pretty cool too. There's all kinds of third-party instruments made for their Kontakt sampler, including the recently hyped electric rhythm guitar Shreddage. For orchestra, EWQL is pretty popular, and with rock drums ppl use Addictive Drums or Superior Drummer. There's a ton of different synths out there, Zebra being one of the big ones that gets suggested a lot.

On a free level, Synth1 is a competent but messy looking synth, I prefer suggesting ppl learn synths using FreeAlpha or TAL-Elek7ro. There's lost of others as wel. The free KORE Player and its expansions come with some useful sounds, as does Yellow Tools Independence Free.

In order to get your stuff to sound higher quality stuff, you not only need decent synths/samplers, but also good effects, and learn how to use them right. Here I think Mixcraft is equipped with what you need already, so you should just learn to use them right. A good compressor, limiter, reverb, delay, and eq are the most important tools. They take a while to learn to use right tho.

Maybe you've noticed the chippier mixes on ocr. It's not about the sounds you use but how you use them. Some types of music can be done with pretty simple sounds. Then again, some types of music can't.

Maybe this'll get you started in the right direction. it better, cuz I didn't intend on writing something this long.

Oh and Mixcraft may be functional and it's good enough to make remixes for ocr with, but at some point you may want to look at a different DAW, like FL, Cubase, or something. Maybe.