Time to move on?

[Saudade]

Hi all,

Read about an earlier post on converting GS format libraries to other (hardware) formats. I got a related question here: With the release of Gst 2.2 (and the supposed Win XP compatible 2.5 ver soon), is the platform finally stable enough for one to sell away his hardware samplers?

There seems to be no advantages of hardware samplers over Gst now- perhaps only their ability to read native format libraries more accurately. Therefore I am contemplating selling away my S5000 before its value drops further.

So operationally wise, can one rely day-to-day on Gst as the sole sampler workhorse in a setup that relies on sampled sound sources at least 95% of the time? Are there any professional musician on this forum who does that?

[Nick Phoenix]

If you have a kickass system, Gigastudio is very reliable except for the polyphony overload problem. No other sampler I know of crashes when you overload the polyphony. When will this be fixed???????? I have many other samplers, but don\'t really use them anymore.

[Jamieh]

I find my GigaStudio to be quite reliable on my Win98 system, though after heavy use for multiple hours (say 4+ hours) I usually need to reboot once to get a totally click & pop free output.

Has a Win XP version really been announced, or is this still heresay from earlier discussions about Win 2000? I would love to see a Win XP version.

[gigaDiga]

I don\'t know much about the s5000 but my guess is that you\'ll miss the following things....

1) In general there are fewer things midi controllable in GS.
2) There is still no easy and intuitive way to add effects to the pipeline apart from NFX or rendering to audio and then applying effects to the audio.
3) GS isn\'t really a musical tool designed by musicians its really an offshoot from a data management and streaming company... this reflects in the products lack of certain features commonplace throughout the rest of the keyboard world (portamento, xFade looping, midi control of ADSR, LFO delay, etc)... but it does have excellent data management tools (suprise suprise)

No, in my opinion, GS has not yet seized upon its true opportunity of replacing the hardware sampler. If I still had my ASR-10 I\'d definitely use it. However software sampling WILL make hardware redundant one day and it might be worth selling your kit before that day arrives if you want to get any dosh back.

If I were you I\'d invest in a copy of GS because there are loads of great things which it does do which your s5000 probably doesn\'t. It would definitely compliment your setup and, who knows, you might find GS v3 DOES replace your s5000.

fingers crossed (god knows nemesys have got a long wish list to respond to!)

[Endicott]

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

[Saudade]

Thanks guys for your comments. Jamieh, actually I heard about the supposed Win XP Gst ver from guess who......Egosys!!! Hardly reliable, but they were mentioning it in tandem with their release of their Enhanced WDM driver for Win XP(which is sort of a all-in-one solution encompassing ASIO2, EASI, GSIF capbilities if I read correctly). However, they mentioned that the anticipated feature called \"Gigawire\" will only be implemented after Nemesys\' launch of their XP compatible version.

With Gigawire, one will be able to patch their o/p of Gst directly(via the driver)realtime into the inputs of eg Cubase VST and thus applying of fx, DirectX or other variety from within your sequencer will finally be possible.

Actually this \"promise\" is what drove me to think about revamping my setup into a completely software based studio. And since I am very much of a \"load and play\" person who would rather rely on buying well-programmed libraries than tweaking it myself, I guess I would not miss features like midi controlling of program parameters available only in hardware samplers, as Gigadiga cautioned.

One question for Endicott though, what do you mean using a dedicated PC for Gst adds jitter, do you mean by midi timing or digital interfacing?

[Endicott]

..

[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

[dnortana]

Jamieh wrote:
\"I would love to see a Win XP version.\"

I think I read on a thread where Nemesys themselves stated that GigaStudio doesn\'t (won\'t ?) work as well on XP.
Why would we look forward to changing platforms at all? As far as I\'m concerned, Gigastudio is meant to run on its own PC, and so far, Win98SE is the most stable of the windows platforms. I think the emphasis should go into making it bulletproof on this platform, rather than see resources get siphoned off to get it to limp along on a new system that will simply - by definition - be less Gigastudio friendly.
My two cents,
Regards,
Trond.

[Jamieh]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>I think I read on a thread where Nemesys themselves stated that GigaStudio doesn\'t (won\'t ?) work as well on XP.
Why would we look forward to changing platforms at all? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Have you used Win2000 at all? If you have, then you know it is about 100000000000 times more stable than Win98. WinXP is built on the same kernel as Win2000, so it should also be very stable.

Imagine being able to run GigaStudio for days or even weeks at a time without having to reboot. I don\'t know what other people have seen, but if I run GigaStudio with a full orchestra loaded, I usually have to reboot once every 4-6 hours.

[Saudade]

A little bit off topic here, but I think what Jamieh said is very true, that is we all should be looking forward to the day when powerful software like Gst can be truly stable and realise its full potential. Don\'t all of us here wish there were no more \"software\" issues category in this forum simply becoz it is not necessary?

Of course the day is still far in the horizon but Win XP may be the first infant step. Even though an OS is proven stable we can never seem to stick to it because all other music software and soundcards are moving on to future versions and drivers with better debugging and features. I would love to go back to the days when I used Master Tracks Pro 4 on Windows 3.1. But knowing the things I can do now on a PC I can never stay on without becoming left behind and extinct.

What I really really look forward to is the day when major software manufacturers like Nemesys, Steinberg/Emagic etc ~WAKE UP~ and start writing versions for the BeOS operating system.

Somehow only the smarties at IZ Corp(responsible for the Radar24 and the entire series) realise that BeOS IS THE KEY to milking the full potential of any music or multimedia software. Look how stable their recording software is.

No matter what, Windows and Microsoft will always be an OS targetted at office and home users. Only BeOS is written ground up specifically for multimedia use.

Imagine, no crashes, no freezes, no need for PC optimization tweaks, many more times the FX you can load and track count, rock solid timing, fast boot up, lightning speed responsiveness, true multi-tasking etc............CAN ANYONE HEAR ME????????

JOIN ME IN MY CRUSADE!!!!!

(I don\'t work for BeOS)

[Jamieh]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>What I really really look forward to is the day when major software manufacturers like Nemesys, Steinberg/Emagic etc ~WAKE UP~ and start writing versions for the BeOS operating system.,<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Only problem is that BeOS doesn\'t exactly have any market share. I get the feeling that Nemesys only has the resources available to write one version of GigaSampler, so I can see why they choose to write for the OS that has market share.



[This message has been edited by Jamieh (edited 07-07-2001).]

[psi]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Endicott:
Heya Saudade,
To tell the truth, I´d give my soul to find out how Emagic&Steinberg were able to implement their zero jitter. Coz, believe me, the jitter there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Endicott,
I don\'t know exactly what method Emagic&Steinberg use; but with a sampler integrated into the sequencer, the following approach is possible: The sequencer tells the sampler, a little bit ahead of time, that it needs a note at time x. The value x can be specified to the precision of a sample. Then the sampler prepares the note and adds the digital audio to the audio buffer, positioned with sample-accurate location. When time x comes along in playback of the buffer, the note begins at the perfect time because the audio was there (perfectly positioned) ahead of time. Of course if the note could not be added before time x was reached, then you\'ll have problems and would need to increase your latency to avoid this. But there is no jitter in the timing of the note. Even if there is jitter in the timing of the sampler receiving the request, the time parameter x is unaffected. As long as the sampler is able to play the note to the buffer before time x, then all is well.

A sampler triggered by midi, on the other hand, cannot receive requests for a note at a specified time x, only for a note now; so it is subject to the timing of receipt of the message.

Of course, if you play your integrated sampler live from a keyboard, it _will_ be subject to jitter. Similarly, if you tried to control your EXS24/HALion samplers via midi from a sequencer on another computer, the timing would no longer be sample-accurate. (The solution for the external sequencer would be to use a protocol other than midi that would allow prerequests with a time parameter.)

psi

[This message has been edited by psi (edited 07-07-2001).]

[donnie]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Saudade:
A little bit off topic here, but I think what Jamieh said is very true, that is we all should be looking forward to the day when powerful software like Gst can be truly stable and realise its full potential. Don\'t all of us here wish there were no more \"software\" issues category in this forum simply becoz it is not necessary?

Of course the day is still far in the horizon but Win XP may be the first infant step. Even though an OS is proven stable we can never seem to stick to it because all other music software and soundcards are moving on to future versions and drivers with better debugging and features. I would love to go back to the days when I used Master Tracks Pro 4 on Windows 3.1. But knowing the things I can do now on a PC I can never stay on without becoming left behind and extinct.

What I really really look forward to is the day when major software manufacturers like Nemesys, Steinberg/Emagic etc ~WAKE UP~ and start writing versions for the BeOS operating system.

Somehow only the smarties at IZ Corp(responsible for the Radar24 and the entire series) realise that BeOS IS THE KEY to milking the full potential of any music or multimedia software. Look how stable their recording software is.

No matter what, Windows and Microsoft will always be an OS targetted at office and home users. Only BeOS is written ground up specifically for multimedia use.

Imagine, no crashes, no freezes, no need for PC optimization tweaks, many more times the FX you can load and track count, rock solid timing, fast boot up, lightning speed responsiveness, true multi-tasking etc............CAN ANYONE HEAR ME????????

JOIN ME IN MY CRUSADE!!!!!

(I don\'t work for BeOS)

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Come on guys...Nemesys is only going to write code for the Microsoft platform. All the programers are Windows guys are they are not going to hire out people to write code for any other OS. If we can\'t get a Mac version after 2 years a BeOs version sure ain\'t going to happen.

Just my 1 /12 cents

Donnie

[Endicott]

..

[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

[wazoo]

Hey did you notice Jeff Rona\'s Reel World column in Keyboard magazine, current July issue)- he has sold many of his rack samplers and now uses GigaStudio too. In the same issue, producer Dallas Austin uses it as well (see Dallas Autin Artillery, pg 40, and Rick Sheppard pg 38)

GigaStudio has been rock solid for me as well(especially v 2.2, build 42), and has far tighter live playablity than any \'plug-in\' sampler due to it\'s architecture.

Any instabilities noted above are likely to be specific to the hardware and their repective drivers. Check out the system below, very similar to mine: (re-post from similar thread)
dnortana
Member
Posts: 53
Registered: Feb 2001
posted 07-07-2001 01:53 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom,
My responses all assume that you will use GigaStudio alone on a dedicated PC set-up for audio (like one of the PC\'s described on the www.rme-audio.com (\"http://www.rme-audio.com\") site, for example).
1. Yes. I find it rock solid reliable. I use it daily for hours and hours, it does not crash. You\'ll hear horror stories, but usually once you find out what system the problems are happening on, you are not surprised they\'re having trouble.

2. Sample libraries in Giga format are literally blossoming like a meadow in springtime. Also, Chicken Systems makes translators from a lot of different formats. I am waiting on one for Kurzweil, which is not yet implemented. Caution: I have not used one of these translators, hopefully someone else can answer you.

3. On a proper machine, GigaStudio latency is about like any other dedicated hardware sampler. I use mine together with a rack full of other MIDI gear, and it is not special in this regard. Pay particular attention to the soundcard you get. I highly recommend the rme 9652 Hammerfall, which has incredibly low latency.(plus 24 channels ADAT lightpipe, word clock in and out, and S/PDIF or AES/EBu). MIDI is another potential delay factor, and it needs to be done properly (not USB) to avoid impacting Gigastudio.

Hope this helps you out.
Regards,
Trond
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[This message has been edited by wazoo (edited 07-08-2001).]