Quote:

Announcing a new interactive tour of the instruments of Garritan Personal Orchestra. This flash presentation lets you hear some of the instruments in the GPO orchestra in an interactive way with a zooming orchestra map. You can view the GPO Audition here: http://www.garritan.com/audition/ Broadband is recommended to view the audition. Thanks to James Mireau who did the flash programming and rotoscoping. James also modelled and filmed himself conducting for the Audition. Also, there are many new demos and works from users on the GPO site. This GPO Audition is an ongoing work in progress and will be updated from time to time. I invite GPO users to submit instrument demos for future inclusion in the Audition. Gary Garritan www.garritan.com

Now, PO is even more convincing in my ears...

It's rather

Now that the contact player has been updated (which I learned from kvr; neither Garritan nor NI contacted me; great customer service guys!) it's actually usable on the Mac. The first edition of the player was a piece of unmitigated evil.

Victor.

Now those are demo's! Easily layed out by instrument. Very nice.

Hmmmm very cool demo!

Oh dear. I just know I'm going to make myself unpopular (again).

I think the demo sounds crap.

Where are the dynamics and where is the high end?

Hopefully this was a limitation of the format, I don't really know about stuff like that, but it sounds static and dull to me.

I really don't want to whinge, and if you lot like it it, then I'm very happy for you. I really don't like it, though. Just my opinion. I'm sure others here will love it.

Which other library do you recommend in the same price range?

CaptainMark wrote:

Oh dear. I just know I'm going to make myself unpopular (again). I think the demo sounds crap. Where are the dynamics and where is the high end? Hopefully this was a limitation of the format, I don't really know about stuff like that, but it sounds static and dull to me. I really don't want to whinge, and if you lot like it it, then I'm very happy for you. I really don't like it, though. Just my opinion. I'm sure others here will love it.

Take a second to consider this. It's a FLASH DEMO. This ain't your fathers 44.1khz 16 bit samples you're listening to here. I think the high end is killed, and sounds a bit flat. But do consider how fast these samples pop up, and I think we probably got the idea on how high the bit rate and sample rate is though.

Honestly, it really reminds me of listening to classical station music on the radio. I think too many of us are getting used to the huge 'produced' orch music in movies.

Devon

@ Devon

Yeah mate, like I said, it may be a limitation of the format.

But the demo still sounds crap.

It seems there are two schools when it comes to sampled instruments like GPO. In the first, things are pristine and "classical" with maybe a bit of reverb. JUST A BIT! It all feels kind of upper crust in its own quiet way.
But in the second, the samples are treated like any other form of audio raw material and can become creative in their own right. For GPO I like the second method better. Put some tube and compression on a solo GPO cello and you've got something with serious sonic cojones. GPO doesn't have to sound more classical
-than-thou. The solo violins -- Stradivarius, Guarneri -- actually a lot of the samples, have an amazing quality as SOUNDS.
This isn't everyone's thing, but I'd love to see some GPO demos that were a bit more adventurous to show the sounds in different contexts..

CaptainMark wrote:

@ Devon Yeah mate, like I said, it may be a limitation of the format. But the demo still sounds crap.

After listening to them myself, I tend to agree with you that they do sound a bit like crap. QLSO Silver is starting to sound better. I'll let them battle it out for awhile longer. Hell, I just might skip them altogether. I needed a harp, and I believe Liqih's harp is going to fill in that void for me already, as well as I just need to grab Project Sam Trumpets, and seriously, I'm done for some extremely top quality samples for orch. Silver and GPO will just give me some more 'colors' on my palette for sonic shaping for layering.

Devon

AD80 wrote:

Which other library do you recommend in the same price range?

I think it sounds worse than Sampletank. (I also think Sampltank's classic sounds are very poor.)

I'm going to wait.

I'm not putting GPO down, I'm just saying the demo sounds shite to my ears. Perhaps it's lots better than the demo,

At the moment I've got a huge library from many sources (mainly freeware) that sounds loads better than this demo.

I'll see if I can blag a "real" demo, then I might change my opinion.

I was just astonished that anybody could find this demo impressive.

AD80 wrote:

Which other library do you recommend in the same price range?

QLSO Silver isn't too shabby actually. Take a listen to this and tell me that doesn't sound nice.

http://www.soundsonline.com/cd_mp3_demos/176807.mp3

Certainly sounds better than the GPO Audition page. But then again, I PROMISE you, that's a LOT of work right there, with a very experienced composer too. I think even Capt Mark will like that.

Devon

Damn that does sound really nice . I wonder how much ambience there is on each patch. I know GPO has the option of close/mid mic placment.

@Devon

Oh no, not again.

It looks like I might have to agree with you, and I was so looking forward to a really good argument.

QSOL might be the way to go. I'm probably going to wait for a little bit too.

All I want is some decent strings. I can't ask you for advice though, you'd just harp on (hahaha) about some Gigasampler bollocks.

Perhaps I'll just wait for Gigasampler VST support (due soon?).

CaptainMark wrote:

Perhaps I'll just wait for Gigasampler VST support (due soon?).

If they don't get it out soon, Rene's sfz+ with Giga support will take the market. I got in on it during the betas with Giga support, for the gigas I have it's great!

Doug

dougsyo wrote:

CaptainMark wrote: Perhaps I'll just wait for Gigasampler VST support (due soon?). If they don't get it out soon, Rene's sfz with Giga support will take the market. I got in on it during the betas with Giga support, for the gigs I have it's great! Doug

You may well be right matey.

I'll just have to wait and see.

The Audition is more of an education tool to give an overview of the orchestra. It is in flash format that does not lend itself to high fidelity. GPO has top quality instruments - Stradivari & Guarneri solo violin, Steinway Concert Grand piano, von Beckerath Concery Pipe Organ, Mustel Celeste, Haynes flutes, and over $10 million worth of instruments.

If you want a better idea of the sound and versatility of GPO, there are over 40 mp3s at www.garritan.com/mp3.html Here is a representative sample:

http://www.garritan.com/mp3/ahhmovies.mp3
http://www.garritan.com/mp3/TheSeventhSeal.mp3
http://www.garritan.com/mp3/GPOtest_JMCWinter.mp3
http://www.garritan.com/mp3/EasyWinners-Ragtime.mp3
http://www.garritan.com/mp3/mozartClarinetConcerto.mp3
http://www.garritan.com/mp3/Magic-Flute-Overture.mp3
http://www.garritan.com/mp3/SugarPlum_Fairy.mp3


The Audition is an evolving project. I would like the input of the K-v-R community for suggestions of the Audition as a learning tool. GPO users are invited to submit instrument mp3s.

Gary Garritan
www.garritan.com

***

Garritan wrote:

This is an evolving project and GPO users are invited to submit instrument mp3s for the Audition.

More brass-centric demo pieces, please!

- m

AD80 wrote:

Damn that does sound really nice . I wonder how much ambience there is on each patch. I know GPO has the option of close/mid mic placment.

They are stage mic'ed for Silver. Platinum has close and far mics as well. I think they used some reverb that comes with QLSO though.

Devon

CaptainMark wrote:

All I want is some decent strings. I can't ask you for advice though, you'd just harp on (hahaha) about some Gigasampler bollocks. Perhaps I'll just wait for Gigasampler VST support (due soon?).

Sorry, but that's where all the good libraries are, in Giga format. I would NOT count on Giga being a VSTi. MAYBE a rewire client at best. Get sfz+ once it's out. So far, sfz+ seems to work fine with the Giga libraries, but I need to dig into it more still. I had some popping issues, but that's because I had the latency on my card at 1.5ms. Once I set it to 6ms, worked like a charm. Loads considerably faster than Giga does too. So that probably be a good option for you. Giga is 'supposed' to be annouced at NAMM. We'll see.

Devon

CaptainMark wrote:

I think the demo sounds crap.

I don't think that this demo can be taken as fully representative of how the library actually sounds.

Check out some of the demos on their site at http://www.garritan.com/mp3.html#GPO

Some of this stuff is really impressive.

I ordered GPO a while back, and I'm looking forward to receiving it and putting it to some good use. I plan on posting a review after I receive it and have had a chance to work with it.

I "Hope" you have good luck in finding a suitable orchestral library.

DevonB wrote:

Sorry, but that's where all the good libraries are, in Giga format. I would NOT count on Giga being a VSTi. MAYBE a rewire client at best. Get sfz+ once it's out. So far, sfz+ seems to work fine with the Giga libraries, but I need to dig into it more still. I had some popping issues, but that's because I had the latency on my card at 1.5ms. Once I set it to 6ms, worked like a charm. Loads considerably faster than Giga does too. So that probably be a good option for you. Giga is 'supposed' to be annouced at NAMM. We'll see.

As another alternative, there's the Giga VST adapter from FX-MAX. Like the others, it's not released yet.

About the demo, I didn't expect it would sound great. I think it's just a great and new way of demoing something. And probably it'll get better in the future.

Nice demo...

Now when am I actually going to get my hands on the real thing?

Any signs of this starting to ship in the UK yet?

Awww... the Time and Space website says Feb 2004 now. I thought this was out already (there's a downloadable update!).

andrew71 wrote:

Awww... the Time and Space website says Feb 2004 now. I thought this was out already (there's a downloadable update!).

best service already ships GPO, look here.

Cheers but it's already ordered and paid for...

andrew71 wrote:

Cheers but it's already ordered and paid for...

It was just an example, they don't ship to UK, but they seem to be related to Time + Space. Strange that Time + Space don't ship them yet. But hmmm did you place a preorder at Time + Space then?

Not an early preorder unfortunately. I ordered between Christmas and the New Year - didn't have the money beforehand. My belief is that it is a delay getting the software duplicated (don't know where I got that idea from though).

It doesn't matter though - there's no urgency, I'm just an impatient type of guy...and it sounds like a quality product!

CaptainMark wrote:

At the moment I've got a huge library from many sources (mainly freeware) that sounds loads better than this demo.

CaptainMark, please tell me more about those freeware sources that sound better than GPO. This will save me some bucks...

psynus wrote:

CaptainMark wrote: At the moment I've got a huge library from many sources (mainly freeware) that sounds loads better than this demo. CaptainMark, please tell me more about those freeware sources that sound better than GPO. This will save me some bucks...

I didn't say they sound better than GPO. I said they sound better than the demo. Pay attention in future.