Christian Obermaier
08-01-2001, 02:15 PM
Hi there.
First things first, let me introduce myself.
I am a composer and sound engineer living in germany, doing quite a few tv documentaries and have grown my own studio over the last 10 or so years. I am quite familiar with E-Mu and Akai samplers, with Logic Audio and a bunch of other soft- and hardware.
As i realize that just buying one more E-Mu only will postpone my repeatedly-hitting-the-RAM-wall-problem, i am currently looking into Gigastudio.
I intend to set this up on a separate PC which will be in the other room, remote controlled from Logic Audio running on a Mac G3.
The main feature of GS for me would be the sample streaming from disk, obviously, mostly beneficial for todays huge orchestral sample libraries.
If there\'s reverb and stuff built in, then why not (i know it is), but i couldn\'t care less if the reverb doesn\'t cut it, i got plenty of that in hardware. I want to use this as just
another (big) module, with as little fiddling on the machine itself as possible. While i realize that there actually *is* quite some fiddling involved to set this all up
properly, i want it to run as transparently as possible from there on.
The GS machine should run 4 to 8 real analog outputs with further 4 analog outputs acting as MIDI remotable (and programmable) Aux Sends to be connected to my hardware fx thru my mixing board. I lured the poor guy in the shop today into repatching his demo system to see if the built in audio mixer\'s aux sends can be routed to a physical output. We achieved this quick and dirty by simply setting the reverb unit to Bypass and route its outputs to a physical output.
1. The guy in the shop told me they are only licensed to ship their PCs with Windows ME. Is this ok or should i take the long road and reinstall everything after downgrading to Win98 ? 2000 ? MS-DOS2.0 (haha only serious ) ?
I have to admit that i am a bit shy of PCs. While i have run into more or less everything that can happen to you on a Mac, i\'m a bloody newbie with Wintel, so please bear with me.
2. My sample library consists of lots of AKAI CDs and since those are often not satisfactorily programmed and laid out, i almost always end up loading them into my E6400s, tweaking them, add controller cords and stuff, then resave the whole shebang in EIV format and finally burn CDRs from that which from then on are my
workhorses while the pristine only-used-once AKAI originals are collecting dust on the shelf.
You see, readjusting this damn flute velocity curve or that accurate but stupid violin transposition and key range every bloody time makes me cringe up the walls if it happens during the rush of a production. On the other (same, actually) side, i\'m not shy to invest even days to get this just right *before* the **** hits the fan. So the question is, how (if at all) does Translator convert EIV banks, samples, presets, controllers, cords, filter settings, lag processors and all the other esotheric stuff ?
3. The guy in the shop showed me that there can be 5 external MIDI controllers assigned to specific destinations in a preset. One of them being cc64 Sustain Pedal
there remain only 4 to do anything else. Is this correct ? I hope not. Does this at all correlate to the E-Mu\'s eight MIDI A-H controllers plus eight further ones Pitch,
Mod, ChaPress etc. ? How would they think to get away with five controllers ? Or am i missing the boat bigtime ? What\'s up with that Dimensions stuff in this context?
4. I hoped to be able to reach any single Giga preset on disk remotely with Bank/Program Change commands. I was told that there has to be loaded a preselected
bunch of presets which then get arbitrary program numbers in order of their loading time. This would definitely complicate things quite a bit. I also understand that Bank/Program numbers *can* be sort of hard coded in the presets\' properties dialog, but this has to be done one by one. What\'s the story here ?
5. How does a Giga set correlate to E-Mu\'s folder/bank/preset/sample structure ? Where and how is the Audio Mixer / Preset Combination / FX Setup stored ? Do i
have to resave the whole mess only because i have changed a bloody reverb time, like we all know it is on the E-Mus ?
6. Is the Audio Mixer Channel\'s physical output setting remotable via MIDI (compare cc79 val 0-3 for the E-Mu\'s outputs). They say *everything* is remotable via MIDI, but we all know the term *everything* to be quite elastic...
7. Regarding backing up the whole stuff, the salesman recommended adding a CD burner to the system. I get headaches even thinking about fitting a 1.4Gb
Whatever-Setup onto 650Mb CDRs. Not to mention the other 30Gb i could fill without further effort. Isn\'t it most efficient *and* least expensive in the long run to just get a second hard drive the same size as the main library disk and do a 1:1 copy after each session or day ?
8. Am i just paranoid trying to figure out all those stepstones and pitfalls other people seem to be happily falling into ?
I realize this is has become a quite elaborated query, and i certainly appreciate *any* time you want to devote to answering even but one of these questions.
Many thanks in advance
Christian
First things first, let me introduce myself.
I am a composer and sound engineer living in germany, doing quite a few tv documentaries and have grown my own studio over the last 10 or so years. I am quite familiar with E-Mu and Akai samplers, with Logic Audio and a bunch of other soft- and hardware.
As i realize that just buying one more E-Mu only will postpone my repeatedly-hitting-the-RAM-wall-problem, i am currently looking into Gigastudio.
I intend to set this up on a separate PC which will be in the other room, remote controlled from Logic Audio running on a Mac G3.
The main feature of GS for me would be the sample streaming from disk, obviously, mostly beneficial for todays huge orchestral sample libraries.
If there\'s reverb and stuff built in, then why not (i know it is), but i couldn\'t care less if the reverb doesn\'t cut it, i got plenty of that in hardware. I want to use this as just
another (big) module, with as little fiddling on the machine itself as possible. While i realize that there actually *is* quite some fiddling involved to set this all up
properly, i want it to run as transparently as possible from there on.
The GS machine should run 4 to 8 real analog outputs with further 4 analog outputs acting as MIDI remotable (and programmable) Aux Sends to be connected to my hardware fx thru my mixing board. I lured the poor guy in the shop today into repatching his demo system to see if the built in audio mixer\'s aux sends can be routed to a physical output. We achieved this quick and dirty by simply setting the reverb unit to Bypass and route its outputs to a physical output.
1. The guy in the shop told me they are only licensed to ship their PCs with Windows ME. Is this ok or should i take the long road and reinstall everything after downgrading to Win98 ? 2000 ? MS-DOS2.0 (haha only serious ) ?
I have to admit that i am a bit shy of PCs. While i have run into more or less everything that can happen to you on a Mac, i\'m a bloody newbie with Wintel, so please bear with me.
2. My sample library consists of lots of AKAI CDs and since those are often not satisfactorily programmed and laid out, i almost always end up loading them into my E6400s, tweaking them, add controller cords and stuff, then resave the whole shebang in EIV format and finally burn CDRs from that which from then on are my
workhorses while the pristine only-used-once AKAI originals are collecting dust on the shelf.
You see, readjusting this damn flute velocity curve or that accurate but stupid violin transposition and key range every bloody time makes me cringe up the walls if it happens during the rush of a production. On the other (same, actually) side, i\'m not shy to invest even days to get this just right *before* the **** hits the fan. So the question is, how (if at all) does Translator convert EIV banks, samples, presets, controllers, cords, filter settings, lag processors and all the other esotheric stuff ?
3. The guy in the shop showed me that there can be 5 external MIDI controllers assigned to specific destinations in a preset. One of them being cc64 Sustain Pedal
there remain only 4 to do anything else. Is this correct ? I hope not. Does this at all correlate to the E-Mu\'s eight MIDI A-H controllers plus eight further ones Pitch,
Mod, ChaPress etc. ? How would they think to get away with five controllers ? Or am i missing the boat bigtime ? What\'s up with that Dimensions stuff in this context?
4. I hoped to be able to reach any single Giga preset on disk remotely with Bank/Program Change commands. I was told that there has to be loaded a preselected
bunch of presets which then get arbitrary program numbers in order of their loading time. This would definitely complicate things quite a bit. I also understand that Bank/Program numbers *can* be sort of hard coded in the presets\' properties dialog, but this has to be done one by one. What\'s the story here ?
5. How does a Giga set correlate to E-Mu\'s folder/bank/preset/sample structure ? Where and how is the Audio Mixer / Preset Combination / FX Setup stored ? Do i
have to resave the whole mess only because i have changed a bloody reverb time, like we all know it is on the E-Mus ?
6. Is the Audio Mixer Channel\'s physical output setting remotable via MIDI (compare cc79 val 0-3 for the E-Mu\'s outputs). They say *everything* is remotable via MIDI, but we all know the term *everything* to be quite elastic...
7. Regarding backing up the whole stuff, the salesman recommended adding a CD burner to the system. I get headaches even thinking about fitting a 1.4Gb
Whatever-Setup onto 650Mb CDRs. Not to mention the other 30Gb i could fill without further effort. Isn\'t it most efficient *and* least expensive in the long run to just get a second hard drive the same size as the main library disk and do a 1:1 copy after each session or day ?
8. Am i just paranoid trying to figure out all those stepstones and pitfalls other people seem to be happily falling into ?
I realize this is has become a quite elaborated query, and i certainly appreciate *any* time you want to devote to answering even but one of these questions.
Many thanks in advance
Christian