Well, it seems my foray into GS has gotten off to a bad start. Not only am I over three years late to the party, but consequent to that I also can't get any help at all resolving some issues either from TEAC/TASCAM regarding GS3, or SoniVox regarding their Complete Symphonic Collection for GS3. I suppose that's not surprising, given how much GS is considered very much a dead horse now.
Despite this, I thought I'd start what I suppose for most here will be a somewhat redundant thread, covering my exploration into the world of Gigastudio. I feel it would be better to keep my ups and downs in one thread, rather than maintaining one for each issue I cover.
The first is one of Gigastudio 3 Orchestra licenses. It seems these are no longer around at all, so I will have to fall back on what might be available secondhand. Right now I don't have much cash for purchasing such things (such is my life in this screwed up world at the moment) but I have two machines to receive them, one basically ready now, the other still in use doing other work. If anyone knows of any such licenses sitting around doing nothing, please feel free to donate them to a worthy causeas they will allow me to create the fourth and fifth PCs in my 'farm', and allow each PC to handle a different section of the orchestra rather than having to double up.
On that note, a paragraph explaining my current set up. I have two GS3 machines (XPx86) up and running, and one GS4 one (XPx64) waiting to be freed up from other duties before installing GS4. These are all 'Frankenstein' PCs, cobbled together from older tech as PCs have been upgraded. The two GS3s are Athlon XP 3200+ CPUs with Asus A7N8X-E mobos in them, with 2GB ram each. As GS3 can only use just under 1GB ram max due to the kernel mode used, then using anything newer with GS3 is effectively pointless anyway. The GS4 has a dual core Athlon64x2 5000+ on it, and will have 4GB ram when ready. Hopefully it will be able to do something, rather than get hobbled by GS4's bugs.
The second issue is my choice of sample set. I bought the Sonic Implants Complete Symphonic Collection about three years ago (for Gigastudio, of course, and just before TASCAM threw in the towel on it!), but have only now had the time and inclination to fully install it and check it out. It appears there are a number of errors in the collection, chief of which is the failure to load the Strings - Basses - Trills. None of the samples will load at all, which leads me to think that the original file on the CD is in some way corrupted. Any help acquiring a working file would be greatly appreciated. I'm not in any way wanting to violate the intellectual property of SoniVox, but if they won't answer my queries and I have to find the file elsewhere then I think it's fair to say they've 'pushed' me to do so. The other errors seem to be in the way the samples are edited. I've only found two such errors so far, but as I've only checked the first few samples, I think it's highly probable there will be more errors elsewhere. Any heads up on where those might be and any solutions to fix them would be more than welcome.
There are other basic PCs also in the farm, but they are Soundfont-based ones just to add a bit of colour. There's also an old Roland SC88VL synth module, also for adding a bit of colour. All are midi controlled via either direct Midi connections (for two of the Soundfont PCs using MidiOx for routing, and the SC88VL), or MidiOverLan for the GS3/4 PCs and one other Soundfont PC.
The farm is controlled from an old-ish workstation (W7x64, Quad Core2 Extreme 3.2GHz, X25-M SSD main drive, 8GB memory), using older music software as I can't afford the upgrades currently. That's Sonar 7 Producer for 'normal' midi and sample work, and Sibelius 5 for notation-based composition. I've tested Sonar and despite the infrequent freezing, it seems to be OK for working with the midi. I've yet to test Sibelius. Neither are supported on W7x64, but I hope I can get them to work effectively for me.
As and when I have something to show for all of this, I will drum up an MP3 file or two to see what people think. But I have to warn that I'm not in any way classically trained, so don't expect great things, and don't expect them soon. It will very much be a case of as and when.
(Oh, and to the obvious question of 'why don't I just give up on GS and use something more recent?', right now and for the foreseeable future, there simply isn't the money. I am currently 'unemployed', and I don't earn any money doing this, nor do I ever expect too. It's a project I started when I was still working and earning quite well doing desktop programming (back in 2007/2008!) but due to intervening personal issues and the world financial balls-up, hadn't managed to properly get going in).
Ian
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Originally Posted by Reegs
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