Is GOS2 dead?

[alDigi]

Is GOS2 dead?

[FredProgGH]

As a GS3 release, I'm under the impression it is. But the work that was done on it will be a part of GPO Advanced. Someone with more definitive knowledge will probably jump in...

[newmewzikboy]

I believe there is no market there anymore.

Thanks god, we can have focus on one good product. GPO is an enhanced and wrapper over GOS, and ultimately a better product all around.

[Garritan]

Is GOS2 dead?

GOS2 will be integrated into GPO Advanced. The string-only sample market is quite saturated and it would be beneficial for the user to have the rest of the instruments of the orchestra at their disposal.

Gary Garritan

[kitekrazy]

I hope you still continue to sell the original GOS.

[scott cameron]

I can understand that the string-only sample market is saturated, but for breadth of articulations, there is little to compete with GOS - even VSL does not have a second violin section. Is there any chance that there may be a official Garritan or user-created reprogramming of GOS to take advantage of GS3 iMidi rules and do away with Maple tools? Are the current legato transition samples appropriate for use with the new portamento rule?

[Scott_Levesque]

I agree. When I purchased Garritan Orchestral Strings, I was under the impression that one of the benefits of selecting this library would be periodic updates. At that time there had been some updates. However, there has not been an update since I purchased it.

There are a couple of obvious improvements that could be made in an update:

24 bit samples. The original recordings were made in 24 bit, and the manual specifically says that this was to facilitate conversion to 24 bit when the industry reached this point. It has. There is no recording work to be done, only programming.

Use of the iMIDI rules. Currently, legato masking samples and up/down bow switching is handled using the Maestro Tools program (which I do not use, because I connect ProTools and GigaStudio using Re-Wire). GigaStudio3 has features that would allow this functionality without Maestro Tools, so this also is a programming issue.

I'm sorry about the size of the market for new sales, but I think Gary has some responsibility to his existing customers. BTW, I own Garritan Personal Orchestra too, but I would rather use Orchestral Strings.

[Per Lichtman]

I'm intrigued by this news in two respects. 1) Will GOS 2 be fully incoproated in GPO Advanced or only part of it? 2) Will it feature the type of functionality that Maestro Tools provided in GOS Advanced? I hadn't planned on getting GPO Advanced but had planned on getting GOS 2 so if this is my ticket in... :-)

[newmewzikboy]

GOS id DEAD

[Jeannot Welter]

GOS is not dead by any means, but very much alive and kicking. I am sure Gary will elaborate on this.

JW.

[Ian Westwood]

I very much hope GOS is not dead, and I take some heart from what Jeannot said. I hope he knows something I do not :)

I would very much love to see an official Kontakt port. I have tried a number of translations at various times with Kontakt, Translator and HALion. They all have given different results, particularly in terms of envelopes, esp decay times. From my experience, the HALion is by far the best OEM translation - I tested K2 a few days ago and it didn't even port the Pizz programs correctly. However, the HAL port requires MaestroTools which I would like to be able to ditch at this time, hence the desire for a good Kontakt port.

If someone would be willing to put the work in to tweak a Kontakt import to match the original GS version ( I have long since ditched GS), I would be happy to write Kontakt scripts to emulate the MaestroTools functionality. I know that with the correct programming all of the orignal MT functionality could be achieved without scripting, just be using the core functionality now offered by software samplers, but that would take a lot longer to do.

Any thoughts or offers?

Ian

[Ian Westwood]

I'm half brain dead I think. I just notice the title refered to GOS2. My reply was purely related to the original GOS

[newmewzikboy]

Its been said again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again

GOS is being integrated into GPOA

GOS will NO LONGER be UPGRADED....

GPOA will be a much greater product

[Ian Westwood]

NMB - I think you had one too many agains there. (Just trying to make light of the fact I found the undertones in your response a bit insulting and over the top). I think it has been said that GOS2 will be integrated into GPOA, some of GOS was integrated into GPO.

Please look at it from my perspective. I purchased GOS a few years ago at a lot of expense to me. I own GPO. I do this as a hobby and therefore I try and protect any investment I make as much as I can. I believe there is a lot more mileage left for me in GOS that GPO does not cover, but I do not really have any need for GPOA. I therefore feel I can and should be able to get more out of GOS.

Ian

[newmewzikboy]

Ian. I am not responsible for your emotional interpretations. Please act responsibly.

i TOO have GOS, as well as EWQLSO Silver, Gold, and about 15k $ of samples.

GOS is NOT going to be supported. Do your own thread search, and please quit projecting your feelings on typed words...

There is nothing to be done about it. For one, the market dictates that there are already too many orchestral FAT libraries out there. Gary sees this, and also his philosophy has shifted to the more affordable, light utilitarian vision.

and quite frankly, I think GPO and GPOA are GREAT and dont really care anymore about GOS

[Ian Westwood]

OK, If that is the way you want it, this is the last time I shall post at this forum. If you can afford to spend 15K on samples, then good luck to you. I do not have that sort of money.

King wrote a great article in the first issue of VST magazine on getting new life out of old libraries. That is all I want, but if I had 15K to spend it might all be different...

[newmewzikboy]

15K was a lot of wasted money...and I still havent learned my lesson having bought teh silver gold, and teh London strings.

When all i needed was something light so I can write with Finale...

Looking deperately forward to GPOA and Overture 4

[Haydn]

Ian,

Give Gary Garritan a call. He may be able to shed some more light on the future of GOS.

[mderrico]

So what might be the options/upgrade path for people like me? I use and love GOS, but I've already got great woodwinds, percussion, and brass libraries (so I won't use or need a big chunk of GPOA).

I really don't want to have to buy GPOA and thus end up spending money on non-string samples I don't need (especially since I already have the Project Sam libraries - which I believe GPOA will be using).

[newmewzikboy]

I dont think there are many options for you unless you want to continue to collect individual vendor libraries. Even with GPOA, you might want to consider picking up the higher end libraries anyway for final mixes. GPO is good for most writing, but for top end you probably still need the EWQLSO Platinum, VSL stuff...

The great thing about the GPO is the lightness, the ability to use it on small platforms, and for writing. however, for that lightness, there is a price...looping for one...

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Actually, it is my belief that a GOS update/reprogramming for GigaStudio 3 would knock the socks off of people. There is much to be said for the utilitarian/compact nature of GPO. However, there is equally as much to be said for utilizing the unique strengths of GigaStudio 3 with larger libraries like GOS.

Just a few "for instances:"


Using the new filtering methodologies, more timbrally seamless velocity switching is possible
All alternations can be natively programmed
Legato/portamento programming can be significantly improved
GigaPulse programming can achieve wonderful imaging improvements
More interesting articulation "frankensteining" can be achieved
Eventually, I may have time to share some of these reprogrammings. However, some of the techniques require 24-bit sources. While it would be an easy solution to simply upsample the existing waveforms, it would seem less wasteful to take advantage of the natively recorded originals.

Furthermore, I believe that there is potential for better noise reduction results now than at the time of the original GOS production, which would benefit the end result.

One would only need to observe the Miroslav re-release to see that there is interest in seeing good libraries get a makeover. Raw materials which at one time were relegated to the scrap pile can provide valuable alternate takes. What we learn over and over is that it is the re-engineering of the raw materials which can lead to the most powerful results.

As successful as GPO has been, and as attractive as the design is for fitting a large ensemble in a very small footprint, this approch has its limitations. We speak often of huge mega-libraries as cumbersome, but the fact is, huge amounts of storage are extremely cheap and easy to use. One can put a terabyte of Gigabit RAID on a machine for less money than some people spend on hookers and blow in a given week. Hell, a given night.

So, I would propose that it makes a great deal of sense to re-invigorate the GOS brand as much as the GPO brand. One of the key selling points of the GOS brand was that it would be supported and continue to evolve. This seems to have been abandoned in deference to GPO, but GPO is not an evolution of GOS conceptually. GOS is an open platform, editable sample concept, which can benefit enormously by continuing to evolve with GigaStudio. At present, it is not reaching anywhere near its potential on that platform, because it has not been updated to take advantage of the very considerable advances.

[Jeannot Welter]

As I mentionned before in this thread, GOS is very much alive. There has been a lot a experimental work performed on GOS2 - using the original 24 bit files - for months. However the impending release of JABB has been a priority.
Programming for GS3 is not a priority as Kontakt 2 offers at least the amount of features and flexibility that GS 3 offers.
Actually I've been a user since Gigastudio days, but still have not seen a copy of GS 3.
Upsampling is not necessary, as the original GOS recordings are all 24 bit, so are the solo strings recordings.
A variety of advanced, innovative and proprietary noise reduction techniques are being used for the editing of the 24 bit files. These new techniques will allow for advanced features such as user controllable bow noise, vibrato control, more altra corda variations etc.
I know for sure that GOS 2 will be released as part of GPOA, however this does not preclude an advanced strings only release.

Jeannot Welter.

[Garritan]

Bruce, You make a very good case and excellent points to consider.

As you know I was one of the very first giga developers and quite an avid advocate when Giga was first released. GOS update/reprogramming for GigaStudio 3 certainly would knock the socks off of people. The GOS strings comprised the recording of over 10 million dollars worth of strings - no library comes close as far as the quality of instruments. And of course the players who own these instruments were first rate as well.

Going back to the original 24bit files is something we are working on now. You are right about "better noise reduction results now than at the time of the original GOS production, which would benefit the end result." The tools at our disposal 5 years ago pale in comparison to the tools available today. We are redoing GOS for Personal Orchestra Advanced and going back to the original 24bit files and different mike positions (we had mikes that were further back in the room as well).

GOS introduced many firsts. Maestro Tools laid the groundwork for iMIDI and other performance tools that followed. Having alternation and legato was groundbreaking at the time and having it incorporated natively would be convenient. And the possibilities of gigapulse with our 'real spaces" impulses and instrument body resonances can achieve great possibilites.

We did have a couple of years of free GOS updates (not downloads but CDs mailed to users). Our plan was to make the next major update a 24 bit GS3 version. But then there was the long wait for GigaStudio 3. It didn't make sense to develop updates when the platform was going to have a new version upgrade "any time now'. And that "any time now" wound up being several years.

Originally we wanted to do GPO for the Giga platform but the necessary tools needed were in forthcoming GS3. When Giga3 was released it had a version of VSL included free and it's hard to compete against free (in all fairness NI has recently done the same thing in reaction to Tascam's bundle). When I wrote Tascam several years ago with the idea of developing a GSTi (GigaStudio Technology virtual Instrument), and there was little interest in the concept. I think Giga is great technology but there were other difficulties I cannot go into here.

I'm not sure if I agree that GOS has not reached its potential on the Giga platform. GOS was the first super library for the platform and won many awards and accolades. It was a smash success and had significant market penetration for a couple of years. There was virtually no competition until VSL, Sonic Implants, EW, etc came out the following year (the other choice was Mirsolav at $1,600 for one CD of strings vs. GOS' 16CDs for $999). As a result, market penetration was swift and extensive.

But that was then and this is now. Things have changed. We seem to be nearing the end of the product life. It seems to make more sense to have a full orchestral library incorporating GOS2 rather than a dedicated string package. Strings comprise most of an orchestra and why not just offer the entire orchestra? We want to do things with this library that have never been done before. Innovation time again.

While there are many more sample libraries available, I am not sure that the number of Giga users has grown significantly. With Giga I get the feeling I am competing with more and more developers for a shrinking pie. And Tascam seems to have partnered with other developers to do business with.

I'm not sure it makes business sense to support the Giga platform, however, I am not ruling against it. Bruce, if you want to share some of your reprogrammings, I would be happy to discuss this and see what can be done. At this time it may be best to contact each other offline.

Gary Garritan

[steve martin]

I've heard the demo's using GOS, and they are pretty much a knockout allright.
No one would disagree that they are pretty sensational.
Now, GOS2 is going to be part of GPOA - and if this is the case - GPOA is going to be one amazing package.
I don't understand "GIGA-Studio" and so on, as I've never had to use it - but this means that all of those fantastic sounds in GOS will now be avaliable in the new GPOA?

[newmewzikboy]

Where is my GPOA Gary ? :D

[Astro]

I agree. When I purchased Garritan Orchestral Strings, I was under the impression that one of the benefits of selecting this library would be periodic updates. At that time there had been some updates. However, there has not been an update since I purchased it.

I'm sorry about the size of the market for new sales, but I think Gary has some responsibility to his existing customers. BTW, I own Garritan Personal Orchestra too, but I would rather use Orchestral Strings.

I could not agree more with this. I have been very disappointed in the lack of updates to GOS. After buying it, it has felt like an obsolete, abandoned project. This is one reason why I looked elsewhere when buying other orchestral samples. Not a good strategy for repeat sales.

I have always been disappointed that GOS didn't re-issue cleaner versions of the crescendo/decrescendo samples. One reason I didn't even consider getting GPO and choose VSL wind and brass samples was because it seemed to me that GOS had just abandoned the project and left us hanging, never taking care of some glaring problems in the GOS library.

Mike

[Haydn]

Mike,

Read the response above from Gary Garritan which explains why GOS has been updated recently.

GOS has had more updates than any other library that I know of besides GPO.

Developers have to weigh out the costs of updating versus creating new libraries. There is a point that they will just lose money if they don't move on to new things. The market is just not large enough to warrant the time to do updates past a certain point. With GOS in Giga, there were editor issues that caused large amounts of overhead to fix new problems that would creep in such as the unity note bug. This means you had to have a dozen beta testers go over every single note and velocity layer to verify that they were correct.

[gugliel]

One factor in the disappointment about updates is that they were promised! I quote, "your investment is protected with FREE updates". This surely contributed to word-of-mouth promotion and sales -- but sadly, the quote here came along with the last update. Personally I'm not bitter about this, since I've easily gotten my money's worth out of the library as-is, just reminding for the record.

[wst3ae]

Hmmmm...

I must say I am quite surprised at the reaction to Gary's posts on this topic. I think he has been more candid than most vendors would be, and I think his evaluation is fair.

I have been using GigaStudio since it was GigaSampler. I have not yet upgraded to GS3 because I'm not sure what libraries will be available for it, and all the libraries I own now work just fine in GS2.

However, I am seriously disappointed with Tascam and the way they have crippled this tool. I believe that GS is by far the best sample playback tool available today, but without the breadth of libraries the tool is crippled.

I don't know what happened to delay GS3, but two of my all time favorite libraries have, at least for now, jumped ship to other sample playback engines. And that's because GS3 did not come out on time. Did they run into programming problems? We'll never really know.

Virtual instruments have their place. I think they are best suited for really complex libraries, DFH Superior pops to mind, and a virtual instrument treatment for GOS might be just as cool.

For nearly everything else I like the sample playback engine approach, a la GS3. But if the company that is developing it does not pay proper respect to their customers, and their partners, well then, we all suffer.

On the topic of GOS updates, I can understand folks being upset, but I think we have to look at the bigger picture. Yes, it would be great if Gary continued to update GOS, but then when would he have time to introduce JABB and GPO-A?

In the end Gary has to do what is best for his business, because if he does not then he won't have a business, and we won't have new products from his business, and we all lose then.

It is not unlike folks who bemoan the loss of mom-and-pop music stores, but buy everything based on price, usually at a catalog or internet merchent. If they do buy locally they complain if the local store can't match the bigger vendors prices.

As long as my local vendor continues to provide me with knowledgable sales folks, great support, and reasonable prices I gladly pay a small premium (small being important in this case.) It is in my best interest to see them keep their doors open. Sometimes this means I buy less "stuff" in a given year, but that isn't always a bad thing.

Gary, if you are keeping score I'd love to see GPO-A, or even GOS2 available for the GS3 platform. Doesn't mean you have to do it<G>, but that's my vote. My preference is based largely on familiarity (at least with GS2), but a secondary driver is the fact that GS on a second computer works soooo much more smoothly than Kontakt Lite on a second computer. I've toyed with the idea of upgrading to the full version of Kontakt, but then I lose all the neat tricks you've already programmed into GPO. Not a great deal.

Bill

[DPDAN]

This is some very interesting reading here folks.

I would like to add my two cents.

I bought GS3 Orchestra so that I could use GOS, and I am very happy with both.

I go back and forth between V-STack for GPO and Trilogy, then shut that down and open GS3 for GOS.

Once GPOA is available, it will be so nice to just use GPOA, and not have to use another player, (GS3) for GOS. As I said, I love GOS and GS3, but the hassle of having to open and close these two programs is just that.....
a hassle.

I am definately looking forward to these updates :) Even if they have to be on a different platform.

I would like to add that if I were Gary, I would not have any desire to produce another "sample library" that is totally naked and can be copied. Tascam's Gigastudio has copy protection for it's sampler, but Tascam does not appear to provide any form of copy protection for it's partner's products.

.02
Dan :)

[Garritan]

Tascam's Gigastudio software provides copy protection of it's own sampler but does not appear to provide any copy protection to it's partners products.
:)
Good point Dan!

[Houston Haynes]

Good point Dan!

Between exposing developers to piracy and the several-year-long delay for a platform that portends to be technically supportable, I'm surprised that any developer has considered developing for GS3, even after the stabilized it with 3.1.

And for the record - I don't think there's any dedicated string library out there that's as comprehensive as Garritan Orchestral Strings. How long was it before a competitor included a separate section of 2nd Violins? That's what I thought - and to boot, GOS in its $499 version today is WAY more extensive than the version that folks bought for $1000 on day one... no one, NO ONE has a reason to grouse about the value of this library. I find it hard to believe that anyone would have the gaul to assume that they'd get every Garritan product for free for the rest of their lives - but then again, this *is* the Internet...

:n:

[jc5]

Between exposing developers to piracy and the several-year-long delay for a platform that portends to be technically supportable, I'm surprised that any developer has considered developing for GS3, even after the stabilized it with 3.1.


It needs to be bourne in mind though, that all the 'player' libraries are just as pirated, if not more so because the irritating cp methods make them a target to the hackers that get a kick out of it...
The player protection is just an illusion.
The fact that many will not put up with is not. :|:

[mderrico]

And for the record - I don't think there's any dedicated string library out there that's as comprehensive as Garritan Orchestral Strings. How long was it before a competitor included a separate section of 2nd Violins? That's what I thought - and to boot, GOS in its $499 version today is WAY more extensive than the version that folks bought for $1000 on day one... no one, NO ONE has a reason to grouse about the value of this library.

I couldn't agree more :)

[Houston Haynes]

It needs to be bourne in mind though, that all the 'player' libraries are just as pirated, if not more so because the irritating cp methods make them a target to the hackers that get a kick out of it...
The player protection is just an illusion.
The fact that many will not put up with is not. :|:

While the cracked version of embedded NI libraries might be out there (and HALion libraries too) there are other issues to consider. The cracked versions often don't enjoy the performance that legit versions possess, and I have personally witnessed situations where someone has posted a "problem" with their version of the HALion player - and in some cases people have reported that their other applications that use the same protection method seemed to stop working, and the response from the developer was "only people that use cracked software report this problem" and they either dropped off the face of the planet or fessed up and bought the software... ;) and that's as it should be.

But - a Giga library on a Russian piracy site is open to use on any number of platforms that can convert the format - which is just about every freeware sample player out there. Once it's out there, there's NOTHING to protect it. Nothing. TASCAM/Nemesys could have done something about it, and now they've been marginalized because of some rampant case of "wag the dog" run amok.

So, just because it's listed on a piracy site, don't get your panties in a bunch as though they represent equal risk to the developer. They don't.

Looking at the estimated price for GPOA, I can't imagine anyone to grouse about it - GOS stalwarts can look at it like they're getting the "remainder" of the orchestra for the purchase price, and the GOS2 strings as a free update.

There - feel better??

;)

[Per Lichtman]

I feel that copy protection discussions have over-simplified lately and no longer take into account the complexity of the issue. The newer copy protection schemes may indeed afford varying degrees of increased security and at the same time they also create more problems for the user. I'll give you an example: I use 4 DAWs, with 2 DAWs being redundant copies of the others. Why? Because last year I lost 6 MONTHS to down time because of issues like 3 consecutive bad hard drive replacements and the like. Now, with GigaStudio, I can copy the libraries from a back-up and just re-install the sampler and the update each time this happens before bring the system back up to speed again. With the other "copy protected" libraries I find myself exerting large amounts of my time getting things back up and running anytime I go through something as minor as hard drive upgrade: even if it's an identical drive. Not to mention that the need for internet access to deal with the copy protetion creates problems in remote areas (how about scoring arrangements to field recordings in the field?) or more susceptible to service interruptions (what about the composers in areas surround Katrina most recently for instance)?

Why did I pay money for GOS Advanced with so many friends pirated it? Because I support the work that Gary does. He's created a very effective community here that I think we all want to give back to and I pay money to support him, not because copy protection forces me to pay to get the things I want. And I think most of the people that feel a strong sense of community like this have a similar stance. I therefore find it unfortunate that I have to do more work to get legitimately purchased versions of new libraries installed each time I have computer problems than my old friends do when they reach for their pirated libraries. Seems kind of ridiculous doesn't it? Okay, that's about as much as I can write at the moment as I'm currently fighting off mon. *sigh*

Best of luck to GPO-A and I hope that a form of copy protection that's easier for the user gets adopted soon!

[Nino Mojo]

I bought eventually all my libraries. But for a good amount of them I usually use Keygens anyway in case I have to re-install because it's a lot quicker. This is ridiculous. I work in the video game industry and have some friends working in special fx for movies, and they all do the same => they all bought proper licences but use keygens instead of the standard product registration method because it can be quicker and more convenient to install.

Consider Cubase Sx 3.11, it was so hard to crack that the guys who did it said they won't do the next. I know a guy who bought cubase *just* because it was really too much of an hassle to have a crack working (Steinberg obviously put a lot of effort into that). Of course, he "was definitely gonna buy it one day" because he loves the software, but being unable to use it correctly finally made him make the jump. (but Steinberg products' performances suffer a great deal from the copy protection from what I read...)

[Houston Haynes]

(but Steinberg products' performances suffer a great deal from the copy protection from what I read...)

Nope - it's a myth that received propogation on the part of folks who *wished* it was so. But to the contrary, it has been shown that the Syncrosoft dongle has *no* affect on performance. Proven - Unequivocally.

So let's put this bit of fluff to bed for this thread at least.