With my continuing soft palate issues not showing any signs of improvement, I have switched over to a combination wind controller/synthesizer setup for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, it's time to go shopping.
While I have pretty much settled on the Yamaha offering for the controller, along with all of its good features and bad (I hate the hair trigger octave keys, for one thing, and the thumb rest is positively abysmal), the Yamaha synthesizer that I have borrowed has one of the worst simulations of a saxophone tone that I have ever heard. Through most of the range of the baritone "patch", it sounds more like a baritone oboe with a bad case of asthma. The clarinet and the bass clarinet are better, but they could still use some improvement.
With that in mind, I'm interested in the opinions of saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet players as to which synthesizers produces the best simulations of real instrument tone and timbre. If you have some thoughts on the controller as well, by all means air them here as well.
If I have to buy one of these things to continue participation in music, I'd rather not make it a half K per step learning experience, preferring instead to get it as right as possible the first time.
While I have pretty much settled on the Yamaha offering for the controller, along with all of its good features and bad (I hate the hair trigger octave keys, for one thing, and the thumb rest is positively abysmal), the Yamaha synthesizer that I have borrowed has one of the worst simulations of a saxophone tone that I have ever heard. Through most of the range of the baritone "patch", it sounds more like a baritone oboe with a bad case of asthma. The clarinet and the bass clarinet are better, but they could still use some improvement.
With that in mind, I'm interested in the opinions of saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet players as to which synthesizers produces the best simulations of real instrument tone and timbre. If you have some thoughts on the controller as well, by all means air them here as well.
If I have to buy one of these things to continue participation in music, I'd rather not make it a half K per step learning experience, preferring instead to get it as right as possible the first time.