Garritan Libraries Announces "REAL SPACES" Multi-Positional Sampled Reverb Library

[Garritan]

Garritan Libraries announces the upcoming adjunct to its sample libraries - sampled "real spaces". Garritans' multi-positional impulse responses, also known as "sampling reverb", let's you put any audio signal inside an acoustic space of your choosing, such as different concert halls, a performance club, a soundstage, a church, an intimate room, and other spaces. It also allows precise control over an instrument's position on stage and the listener perspectives in the audience.

Garritan "Real Spaces" includes a myriad of multi-positional impulse responses which capture the true acoustics of a performance space. For each instrumentalist in an ensemble, you can use an appropriate impulse response for the location where you want that performer to play in the space. For example, if you want to capture the true acoustic signature of the first violinist seating position in a concert hall, you can simply choose this playing position. There are up to twelve microphone placements for different audience listening perspectives and up to ninety different player positions on stage.

Thousands of impulses were captured from premier performing arts venues. One of the concert halls in this collection is the critically-acclaimed 2,500 seat (125 million dollar) Benaroya Concert Hall in Seattle. Every instrument position on stage (90 positions) was recorded with 12 different mike placements in the audience. Another concert hall is the 1,400 seat, state-of-the-art Chan Centre Concert Hall in Vancouver, Canada. Another is the Bastyr Chapel, which has a reputation for its wonderful acoustics and has been used for many soundtracks for movies, television and interactive games. Recorded by Al Swanson, the resident engineer for Benaroya Hall and the discoverer of the acoustics of Bastyr chapel, utilizing some of the best equipment available, Al has over 35 years of engineering experience and more than 700 classical recordings to his credit. There are also other spaces that will be included in the library.

Garritan "Real Spaces" is a natural adjunct to the quality sounds of Garritan Personal Orchestra, Orchestral Strings, and upcoming libraries - allowing precise control and flexibility. With some libraries, the reverberance of a particular space may be recorded and saturated into the instrument samples whereby you are stuck with that space which is not readily removable. The players are also locked in their chairs and it can be difficult to fight the stereo field and position instruments. The Garritan Libraries were recorded so that they would work ideally with impulse responses. Applying the Garritan "Real Space" impulses will "imprint" the sampled reverb of a particular location and space onto the instrument's audio signal. The result is virtually identical to where an audio signal had actual been recorded in that location on stage and in that space. In addition to stereo, this impulse library will be 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound capable. Garritan "Real Spaces" allows precise control over every sound's spatial location, all with sampled reverbs of placements in real spaces.

Garritan "Real Spaces" is expected to be released in 2006 [edit: no firm date yet]. No pricing has yet been set. More details will be available soon.

[Garritan]

New Acoustic Spaces have been added to the "Real Spaces" collection.

Dvorak Hall in Prague, Janacek Hall, and 13th Century Gothic Cathedral have been added to the collection. In Dvorak Hall, 86 player positions were recorded on stage with 12 positions in the audience. The Gothic Cathedral has some of the longest tails I've ever heard.

This will be in addition to the multi-positional impulses recorded at Bastyr, Benaroya Hall and the Chan Center. Additional spaces are being added to this collection as well.

Gary Garritan

http://www.garritan.com/pictures/DvorakHall.jpg

Dvorak Hall

[Gamera]

Are these raw stereo impulse I can use in Giga Pulse? That would be cool!

- G

[Garritan]

synergy543


I am not familiar with the positioning technique in Altiverb 5. I am in contact with the people at Audio Ease and will let you know what develops. These should work in Kontakt2 and also GigaPulse. We have something special in the works and will let you know when the time is right.

We have not set a price nor release date yet. We just added more spaces and will probably include some additional spaces.

Gary Garritan

[Alan Lastufka]

Too bad AltiVerb is Mac only... :(

[Hans-Peter Gasselseder]

Audioease will release it's Windows version of Altiverb 5 in the end of the year 2005.
So, PC-guys: Be happy! ;-)

[Jesse Hopkins]

Well, Gary! Summer's almost over! I'm waiting to see if I will be able to afford these impulses for Kontakt 2. Sound's EXCELLENT. I wonder how many simultaneous impulses my CPU will handle while running a full orchestra.

[Garritan]

Gary:
Just surfed over to your site and see no mention of the impulse response material. Did I miss something? Is this still a going product? From what I read here it will work with K2; will it also work with Voxengo Pristine Space? Looking forward to some good, new IR's that are well done, especially from Benaroya, seeing as how Doug and Nick won't release the IR they have of that place.NRAJack, Yes, this is still a going product. We've added some more spaces to the library. We plan to have it work with various convolvers. There are other spaces in addition to Benaroya. There's Dvorak Hall (where Miroslav was recorded) and Sonic Temple (where Sonic Implants was recorded) plus a number of other fine venues (like the Village Vanguard, Harvard Chapel and others). One goal is to be able to get different libraries to mix and blend together. More later...

Gary Garritan

[musicpete]

Are there any news on this?

[piano]

Hi Gary,

Has anyone done Jordan Hall in Boston?

This is spectacular for classical recordings and the wait list to get a recording there is long --- last I checked.

David

[Jesse Hopkins]

Hey, Gary. Can't you just sell the convolution samples already for those of us who can just plunk them in to Kontakt 2? I'm eager to try this out. A different convolution for each instrument will sound rather nice.

[Garritan]

NRAJack,

While all the impulses are ready, we have run across performance issues with simultaneous multi-positioning. We are still working on it. Ideally we would have preferred to have a solution that would run dozens of multi-positional impulses in real-time. We had hoped processor speeds would have increased more than they have, but Moore's Law seems to have hit a ceiling a couple of years ago. We are awaiting the quad processors to develop our engine for parallel processing with the new chips. In the meantime if it takes too much longer we will consider releasing a lighter version for exisiting convolvers such as Altiverb.

Gary Garritan

[nikolas]

Thank you Gary for the update and explanation.

It's well worth the wait I reckon. :)

[PeterRoos]

Am I correct to understand that these IR's will only be released as "locked" inside a plugin, and not made available ins standard Wave or Aiff formats? I think a lot of us would be happy to select some two or three preferred true-stereo IR's from the same location and use them in AltiVerb, IR1 or Pristine Space...
Please make them available in the "current" formats as well :hp:

[Nickie Fønshauge]

Developing a product for some processor and speed that's only in some dim future
That's what happens sometimes, when you have visionary ideas. It is my understanding, that VSL ran into similar problems with their MIR.

[nikolas]

NRAJack,

I would argue that for once it is the programs that keep pushing the limits and not the other way around. Not that because there is a new chip, let's beat the hell out of everybody. Especially with games.

Something so big and visionary, could run into that kind of problem. And no one should sacrifice his dreams for something so petty as impossible (Do I sound like an ADIDAS add? :D)

Anyways...

[Wafflemaster]

Thanks for the explanation which I find very weak. Developing a product for some processor and speed that's only in some dim future isn't too cool. That leaves those of us with older machines with just one 2.53 GHz CPU (like in my DAW) out of luck, unless, in some undetermined future time you decide to release a version that'll run in existings convolvers, hopefully something like Pristine Space or Altiverb.

Sorry, but there is nothing "weak" about Garritan's answer. If someone wants a product to support certain functions (like simultaneous multi-positioning) and those functions can not be supported on current/existing hardware, you have no choice but to wait for the newer hardware.

Your "out of luck" argument could be made for ANY software that has certain minimum system requirements.

If you need something now, simply buy Pristine Space or Altiverb.

If you haven't realized it by now, there is a certain software/hardware escalation cycle that always occurs:
-- computer hardware manufacturers come up with more powerful hardware
-- software developers develop software that fully utilizes existing hardware power
-- computer hardware manufacturers come up with even more powerful hardware
-- etc., etc., etc.

[Houston Haynes]

There are a few things on the horizon that could make Gary's dream a reality (on the desktop): first, there's the ATI solution of allowing "general" processing resources to use the GPU for calculations, and second, AMD has released their processor mounting spec, so that other manufacturers can take advantage of Hypertransport and other technologies by using a "generalized" socket for their specialized DSP chips. So, while I don't have any illusions about how long it will take for multi-position convolution to become commonplace/affordable for the average user, it's closer than some people might think.

The next great thing is coming soon, and will be from multiple vectors (hardware and software) to those that are ready to adapt and exploit those new technologies. Visionaries like Garritan are where I'd place my bet to be at the vanguard of the next wave.

[Garritan]

Am I correct to understand that these IR's will only be released as "locked" inside a plugin, and not made available ins standard Wave or Aiff formats? I think a lot of us would be happy to select some two or three preferred true-stereo IR's from the same location and use them in AltiVerb, IR1 or Pristine Space...
Please make them available in the "current" formats as well :hp:Peter,
We are aiming to develop a simultaneous multi-positional system where nearly each instrument has a corresponding impulse. We recorded upwards of 100 stage positions and 15 mike placements in the hall using a variety of captures.

As an Impulse Response developer yourself, I appreciate your being concerned as to how we deliver our impulses and am sure you can appreciate the challenges involved. You ask "Am I correct to understand that these IR's will only be released as "locked" inside a plugin, and not made available ins standard Wave or Aiff formats?" That depends. Although you youself may want some of these IRs, perhaps to use in a traditional convolver or some other purpose, we have special processes in mind. As far as other formats, we are deciding what formats to release it should the multi-positional system become delayed much longer.

Gary Garritan

[Garritan]

Thanks for the explanation which I find very weak. Developing a product for some processor and speed that's only in some dim future isn't too cool. That leaves those of us with older machines with just one 2.53 GHz CPU (like in my DAW) out of luck, unless, in some undetermined future time you decide to release a version that'll run in existings convolvers, hopefully something like Pristine Space or Altiverb. Originally, according to the hits I got in Google, this was supposed to be released in 2005, now your post here on this forum says 2006, and from your response it seems like it won't be until 2007, if at all. I'm sorry I got my hopes up for this product to be available in my lifetime. Guess it's time to spend the money on reverbs for my TC Powercore and give up on this product.NRAJack,
To do a simultaneous multi-positional system you need a bit of horsepower. Just as today's DAWs and software instruments cannot run on yesterday's technology, this approach we are developing pushes the envelope. It is impossible to retain backwards compatitibility when innovating with something as advanced as this.

As you can see from the Altiverb site - http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Altiverb/AltiverbTech.html just using a few impulses can tax a 3 Ghz system.

We may still develop a light version for Altiverb and other convolvers should the multi-positional system become delayed much longer. If you need something soon it is best you not wait and to look at existing third-party products or those included in the various convolvers.

Gary Garritan

[Garritan]

The next great thing is coming soon, and will be from multiple vectors (hardware and software) to those that are ready to adapt and exploit those new technologies. Visionaries like Garritan are where I'd place my bet to be at the vanguard of the next wave.Houston,

You are keeping an eye on these emerging technologies too :). There are new products are on the verge of being released. Quad core procesors and parallel DSP/GPU cards will soon hit the streets and may allow us to realize the things we want to do. We're doing our best and will keep everyone informed.

Gary Garritan

[Garritan]

That's what happens sometimes, when you have visionary ideas. It is my understanding, that VSL ran into similar problems with their MIR.Nickie,
You are right and it happens sometimes. Murphy's Law sometimes kicks in. In addition to VSL's MIR, GigaPulse also had quite a long release time after it was announced. Bionixfx with their convolution using graphics cards (http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24319) was announced a couple of years ago but has also not released their products yet.

But we are not deterred and will develop for the upcoming hardware and are also continuing to optimize our software.

Gary Garritan

[haralg]

Hello, everybody!
I'm all new to this community. I have bought borth GPO and J&BB libraries.
I am using it with the Notation software Sibelius 4, with GPO studio hosting.
I am all new to using sampled libraries, and i bouight them because I got fed up
with MIDI.
I think that I know the main principles how to work the J&BB, but I have a problem understanding how Ambience panel works, - too many new terms for
me. I am writing Jazz and Classical music, and I just need a "normal and pleasant" reverb (or Echo).
Is anybody in this Forum able to tip me about sensible settings in the Ambience
Panel? Maybe explain what the different controls are executing.
Thank you!
With regards
Harald Gundhus