ARIA Engine / Player

ARIA Player review:

Im reviewing the ARIA player that has been released with GPO4 some days ago, so i will concentrate on the sampler engine itself more than in the library.
It makes sense because you can load in ARIA external content, not only the GPO instruments. That feature take my attention time ago, since im missing a good sfz player that can deal with big libraryes, not only with small ones.
First thing i made after installing it was testing the load of external content: I converted my Sampletekk PMI Bösendorfer 290 to SFZ time ago. It worked fine with the free sfz player but i run out of memory for the other tasks, since it eat something like 2GB. Well, ARIA loaded it very fast! and im realizing that it streams from disk: low CPU and RAM usage but same excelent quality as SFZ usually have.
Second test was with a library i converted from the free "Erans sampling project". They were .sxt reason programmed converted to SFZ, and using the Keyswitch opcode. I have tryed the converted library with keyswitches with other samples that can load SFZ files, but so far, any of them was succesfully, some ignore the opcode and others has problems. The only that to the right job was SFZplayer, loading them in RAM. I tryed it with ARIA; it load the library very fast ... and in the GUI was displayed what Keyswitches were available and in a different color the one i was using. Really nice. Appear that some "opcodes" have been added so, now i can label the keyswitches and they will be displayed with their proper name in the ARIA player.
So far, i found ARIA to be a very refreshing product for the sample enthusiast; i highlight this things:

*It is back-compatible with SFZ files. You can load your own material without limitations.
*It support most of the advanced opcodes&programming of SFZ and adds it`s own for enhance your samples.
*It is stable
*Supports Stream from Disk is Multi-Out. This two features combined make ARIA hard to beat if you are working with advanced SFZ files, because there are not much options with this features.

Well, only rest to say that the GUI is very simple, if you like, appear you can make any skin for it simply editing png's and xmls.
I believe that is more than positive for a 1.0 product.

Best Regards.


Marcelo Colina


PS.: I put an "8" under documentation since i feel that SFZ specif is not very well documented yet, even is not exclusive thing of ARIA. The developer has been very kind to help me with the new opcodes.