Good software to go with my new midi controller

[Ice]

I just bought an E-MU Xboard 61 from creative, but the proteus X software it came with is NOT vista compatible - however the board itself is.

I've been using Fruity Loops for some playing, but FL studio is not quite as good as a keyboard (too much cpu usage etc, doesn't recognise pedal, jumpy). I also tried sibelius and sibelius 5 sounds wonderful but it has that pesky tenancy to write the music down and lag my computer up.

I was wondering if anyone knows of some live performance software with a few instruments or more that I could use to play.

Cheers,
Ice

[Reegs]

Try out Cantabile (http://www.toptensoftware.com/cantabile/). It's a VST host, so it will interface with the Xboard and allow you to load any sounds you like, including the myriad of free synths (http://www.kvraudio.com/) and soundfonts (http://sf2midi.com)(with a VST plugin like sfz (http://www.kvraudio.com/get/769.html)or synthfont (http://www.synthfont.com/))

Cheers,
Reegs

[Ice]

Wow this is great, I'm just having one small problem that I've found to be linked to my audio driver's sample rate and buffer size. How do I know which combination to pick to stop the keys from locking up occasionally and to stop the occasional popping sounds?

[Ice]

I actually am deciding now to dual boot vista+xp

I like vista but this is the only problem I have with it.. I guess Im lucky but at this point it looks like it will be easier just to dual boot. Thanks for your help =)