Garritan Libraries has announced the upcoming adjunct to its sample libraries - sampled "real spaces". Garritan's 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 sound stage, 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 Summer of 2005. No pricing has yet been set. More details will be available soon.