Introduction & Question About GigaStudio

[AmplifierExperts]

Hello everyone!

I'm Mark Weiss, from Connecticut and a user of Kurzweil, Roland and Yamaha synths/samplers.

Actually, I've been interested in creating realistic music compositions using some sort of technology to replace orchestras for years.

I think my first realization of that potential was in 1979, when I attended a live demonstration of the (then state of the art) Lowery MX1. I remember the price tag: $20,000. It sounded interesting, but I remember thinking, "Let's wait ten years and see what happens to the technology."

In 1989, I bought a Roland CM64 and thought it was the cat's meow. But after a few months, I became somewhat bored with its very limited sound palette.

My MIDI interests were dormant for a number of years, when suddenly, I got an impulse from out of the blue to look at some Kurzweil K series synths. I scoured Ebay and started with a K2000R this past April. A week later, I cast the winning bid on a K2500RS with all the bells and whistles.

At this point, I wanted something to replace my Akai MX73 master keyboard... having heard good reviews all pointing to the now discontinued Roland A-80. I hunted and hunted for over a month, chased some dead leads, was outbid on a Ebay auction (over $1100) and finally found one privately on a BBS listing for $600 in mint condition. I grabbed it and am very happy with it as a piano feel action.

After that, and thinking back to the Theramin, an instrument you played by proximity of your hands to a column, I purchased a Kurzweil ExpressionMate ribbon. I still have to learn how to utilize it's many features.

In June, I bought a Yamaha FS1R, based on hearing good reviews on it. I use if here and there for a few special sounds that I can't easily (or know how to) create quickly on the Kurzweils.

In July, I got interested in a K2600RS. I chased around a B-stock unit on Ebay for 5 weeks, trying to get the seller to come down on price. Finally decided to buy one, but he was out of stock on the demo models, so he ordered one new from the factory. I was pleased to get the new unit at B stock price. But the real excitement didn't come until I upgraded the OS to v.4. The built in programs are so nice.

But all along, deep inside, I wanted to do orchestral music. Now the Orch ROMs are some of the best I've heard in a hardware synth, but the sounds are somewhat sterile, lack "breath" and utterly fall down on articulation. Most of the samples of violins offer one articulation only! Needless to say, it's been quite difficult to make decent sounding orchestral music that doesn't scream "synthetic". Some arrangements I can make sound very natural, but others, it just can't seem to happen.

I've been buying and attempting to use various sample libraries, thinking this will solve my problem. But I find the Kurzweil only has enough sample RAM (128MB) to load just a few solo instruments, not an entire string section, much less an orchestra! So I have been dealing with the issue for some time now. Between the K2500RS and the K2600RS, I have loaded a series of organ samples and a series of contemporary and a few string samples. I've been getting by with it.

 

But tonight I went to the GigaSampler Sonic Implants web site and listened to their demos--all of them. And now I'm thinking I made a huge mistake spending many thousands of dollars on all these Kurzweil samplers. The demos I heard sounded like real orchestras. They had 'breath', nuiance, various playing styles and effects heard only in a live orchestra... in short, I was blown away by it. But I've basically blown my wad on the Kurzweils.. so it's a little late.

But... if I step into another windfall and come into the market for another sampler, I will definately look closely at the GigaStudio.

I do have a number of questions about it, that I could not find answers to on the Giga FAQ. Maybe a number of you here use GigaStudio and know it intimately.

I'd love to see a running demo... how it works, how the operating procedure compares to a hardware sampler like the Kurz... what I can expect on a typical PC, etc. How well does it work in practice, etc.

Based on the costs of the various libraries, I can see GigaStudio and samples costing easily as much as a hardware sampler, but perhaps I am looking at the most expensive sample sets on the Sonic Implants site.

Well anyway, that's my first post... very long-winded. I hope I didn't bore anyone with it. :-)

 

All My Best,

Mark

[][]

[synthetic]

Wow, that was some post. I work for Tascam (who makes GigaStudio) and would like to answer any questions you have.

 

I think it's an easy program to use, at least as easy as any sampler. You drag sounds up into MIDI channels to load them (or double-click). You can search your hard drive for all staccato horns, etc., and load them for use. There's a feature called "keyswitching" that works well for acoustic instruments. When you press a key mapped for keyswitching, it switches to a different sample, allowing you to play a phrase with several different articulations. The result can be very realistic.

 

A lot of orchestral and film scoring guys are using GigaStudio. You might want to check out a forum where a lot of Giga users hang out:

 

http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum;f=3

 

There are a bunch of people who post their music and talk about the libraries they used, so you can get a sense of what's possible with library x.

 

I really like the sound of GigaStudio, it's tough to compare an 8-16MB sample with a 2GB one. Pianos where every key has been sampled 16 times at different velocities, with the full decay of the sample recorded in each case, and a seperate sample for the key release. The libraries are pretty phenominal. Check out the Vienna Symphonic Library too: they actually built a concert hall just to record the 230GB library, and they're not done yet.

 

I hope I haven't been too spammy, probably a little as a read back through what I wrote. The Northern Sounds guys can give you a less biased opinion, but from what I read I think you'd really like Giga.

 

Welcome to the forums! -jl

[RABid]

I'll give you a perspective from a casual user and non-employee.

 

I have GigaStudio 160, Kontakt from Native Instruments, V-Sampler, and a Yamaha A5000 hardware sampler. Software samplers have a major edge over hardware samplers in realism. Of my software samplers Kontakt may be the easiest to edit sounds, but GigaStudio is the easiest to use. The patch loading is very simple. You can build a 16 channel setup within minutes. GigaStudio is best when running on a dedicated computer. When set up properly it is still the best available. Some people complain that it is not a VSTi, or that it uses special drivers that bypass some Microsoft coding. In actuality this enables GigaStudio to be quicker and more CPU efficient. When running Kontakt within a host I cannot get near the polyphony count that I achieve with GigaStudio.

 

Check out some of the large orchestra libraries or nice pianos for GigaStudio and you will see a big difference between it and the best hardware systems.

 

Robert

[remainanon]

I have a meagre GS 96 system and, frankly, I can't live without it.

 

Bang for the buck? Forget it.

 

It's a bear of a piece of software (sorry, synthetic) and there are a bunch of pesky problems, almost all of which are completely solved by having a purely GigaStudio machine.

 

These days you can build a pretty darn' rocking AMD system for peanuts, and the performance + sound from Giga is, in my experience, unparalleled in my little studio.

 

Now, if you compare it to 75 players at Fox, well, that ain't fair is it?

 

My guess is you'll be very happy with it once you get it up and running.

 

JW

[ELP71]

Hey, man...welcome. This is a great forum.

[Mark Zeger]

Hi, Mark

 

Did you buy Kurzweil native format CD-ROMs? Do you like them? Do you use a Mac or a PC?

 

If you answered "yes", "yes", and "Mac", you might want to consider MOTU MachFive as a software sampler. It reads Kurzweil format samples, but it's Mac only. I'm considering it because I'm and Kurzweil and Mac user.

 

Giga is a killer app for PC. One listen to a huge Giga piano sample made me wonder if I should add a dedicated PC to my home studio.

[Magpel]

Hi Mark, welcome to the Keyboard Corner.

 

Yeah, Giga rocks. The cool thing about it is once your machine it up and running, you can be so selective about your purchases. You don't have to buy 13 new versions of "127: Helicopter" every time you want to expand your pallette. Rather, download a nice 20MB drum kit from Sonic Implants for 20 bucks. Or get a great 500MB piano for 100.

You may ultimately spend more getting your dream sample set together, but you'll do it smaller, dogestable increments (unless you're going right after Garritan, Vitous, and the SI Symphonic Strings collection..."

 

I don't have an extensive Giga library by any means, and I'm running Gigasampler on the same machine as cakewalk. Still, I couldn't live without it. For drums, piano, strings, it's the best.

[DanS]

For pianos, it's Gigasampler/studio.

I use it on the same machine as Cubase, and while it's not without the odd hiccup, the sound quality is worth the occasional glitch.

I just picked up Kompakt as well, to have a sampler running in VST, but Giga can't be beaten.

[AmplifierExperts]

Thanks for the link, synthetic!

I read one thread that really gives me pause... "...to do serious orchestrations, you need multiple Giga PCs" The poster used up all 160 voices just playing 8 instruments. The response was that the tails of sustained instruments were using polyphony, plus stereo is X2 the number of polyphony, so in effect, real polyphony goes down really fast when you start to add chords and multiple instruments. Scary. Especially since my intent is to do grand orchestrations matching a full 104-piece symphonic orchestra.

 

And Mark, I am using PC/Windows/Cakewalk Home Studio at the moment. I have several Kurzweil-native sample CDs. I bought some with piano samples over 115MB in size per program and found those to have annoying alternations between mf and fff samples, with no smooth transition, so that is one example of the problems with sample CDs. I bought some orchestral samples, but they are all LPF'ed and even when I remove the LPF in VAST, the sound is still not quite there. But the real problem there is that the puny 128MB sample RAM fills up with just 3-4 sample sets loaded and the address space for samples fills up even quicker. Once I hit sample # 999, I'm at a dead end.

I'm happy with only 2 CDs --a KeySolutions CD and a Post Organ Toolkit CD that I bought so far. But they are drums, electric basses and church organs. I got that pretty well covered, but the orchestral... when there is a glissando in the strings, it has that "MIDI sound" that gives it away. Woodwinds are rather weak too. They say you can make up for it with VAST, but many of the default sounds don't use much VAST programming to utilize MIDI controllers to modulate and articulate the instruments. The recorded samples themselves sound 'dark' and sterile.

I've gotten marginal improvements in results with an Orchestral Collection sample disc, but a lot of the problems remain. Someone on SonikMatter suggested Garritan Orchestral Strings, although I had listened to some demos back in the spring and wasn't overly impressed at the time. I will revisit the demos and see if I come away with a better impression.

 

Magpel, the scaleability of Giga is a good point. I don't have to plunk down 3 grand all at once, like I did with my K2600RS. I can buy GigaStudio and some basic stuff... but probably not enough to do it all on PC.

Which brings me to... using Cakewalk with Giga AND my 4 Kurzweils all together at the same time. I have my PC connected to an Edirol UM550 MIDI interface, giving me five ports, through which I presently talk to my K synths. I am wondering if I can run Giga, Cakewalk and have CW access both Giga and the Edirol hardware ports?

 

Hey, one last question... can GigaStudio output to Wave files, instead of having to capture the analog outs from the sound card? This would alleviate any s/n ratio issues and distortion issues from cheap sound cards. With the Kurzweil's there is digital I/O, so no analog loss/conversion. I would think Giga would be a natural for exporting songs to Wave format directly. Is this true?

 

Thanks a lot everyone for the warm welcome and tons of tips!

[ksoper]

Originally posted by Mark Weiss:

Thanks for the link, synthetic!

I read one thread that really gives me pause... "...to do serious orchestrations, you need multiple Giga PCs" The poster used up all 160 voices just playing 8 instruments. The response was that the tails of sustained instruments were using polyphony, plus stereo is X2 the number of polyphony, so in effect, real polyphony goes down really fast when you start to add chords and multiple instruments. Scary. Especially since my intent is to do grand orchestrations matching a full 104-piece symphonic orchestra.

 

And Mark, I am using PC/Windows/Cakewalk Home Studio at the moment. I have several Kurzweil-native sample CDs. I bought some with piano samples over 115MB in size per program and found those to have annoying alternations between mf and fff samples, with no smooth transition, so that is one example of the problems with sample CDs. I bought some orchestral samples, but they are all LPF'ed and even when I remove the LPF in VAST, the sound is still not quite there. But the real problem there is that the puny 128MB sample RAM fills up with just 3-4 sample sets loaded and the address space for samples fills up even quicker. Once I hit sample # 999, I'm at a dead end.

I'm happy with only 2 CDs --a KeySolutions CD and a Post Organ Toolkit CD that I bought so far. But they are drums, electric basses and church organs. I got that pretty well covered, but the orchestral... when there is a glissando in the strings, it has that "MIDI sound" that gives it away. Woodwinds are rather weak too. They say you can make up for it with VAST, but many of the default sounds don't use much VAST programming to utilize MIDI controllers to modulate and articulate the instruments. The recorded samples themselves sound 'dark' and sterile.

I've gotten marginal improvements in results with an Orchestral Collection sample disc, but a lot of the problems remain. Someone on SonikMatter suggested Garritan Orchestral Strings, although I had listened to some demos back in the spring and wasn't overly impressed at the time. I will revisit the demos and see if I come away with a better impression.

 

Magpel, the scaleability of Giga is a good point. I don't have to plunk down 3 grand all at once, like I did with my K2600RS. I can buy GigaStudio and some basic stuff... but probably not enough to do it all on PC.

Which brings me to... using Cakewalk with Giga AND my 4 Kurzweils all together at the same time. I have my PC connected to an Edirol UM550 MIDI interface, giving me five ports, through which I presently talk to my K synths. I am wondering if I can run Giga, Cakewalk and have CW access both Giga and the Edirol hardware ports?

 

Hey, one last question... can GigaStudio output to Wave files, instead of having to capture the analog outs from the sound card? This would alleviate any s/n ratio issues and distortion issues from cheap sound cards.

When recording a sequencer track with Giga, you first launch Giga, then launch the sequencer FROM Giga. When it's time to capture the Giga performance, a Wave file is created, where it's easily imported into the sequencer after the fact. (Sounds confusing--it really isn't difficult.) The only problem I see with a sub-pro sound card is the dithering, or the quality of the conversion TO Wave files. When I capture a file with my Layla 24 (laptop) and import it into Sonar, the results are stunning. I'm not sure you'd get the same results with, say, a Soundblaster card. I may be wrong.

 

k.

[synthetic]

Yeah, I've heard of guys using three Giga systems. Hans Zimmer uses 10 computers running Giga as part of his writing system. But there's an Nth degree to any undertaking. If you're writing pieces with 5 different viola articulations plus a dozen other parts you might run out of voices. Another way to do it would be to capture your string part as a WAV file like someone else suggested, import that into your sequencer, then move on to the next section. Or use parts without the release sample, using artifical reverb instead. Still another way would be not to get rid of the Kurzweil gear -- use the Kurzweils for horns while using Giga for strings, etc. It all depends on the music you're doing.

 

I have my Giga set up with a M-Audio Delta 66 sound card. This gives me a S/PDIF digital output to input into my Mac sequencer. I'm even running it at 88.2kHz (up-sampled) to integrate with the rest of my system. I'm using it as another synth in the studio: MIDI in and Audio out like a synth module.

 

The Garritan strings demo is interesting, listen to the really long overview on his site. I learned a lot about how to program realistic strings from that demo. I love the Post stuff too, BTW. His Bosendorfer 290 is my favorite piano right now.

 

-jl