Garritan Aria Player Keygen Download Multi Champion Tradi
Berniece Leonhardt
The stand-alone version of Kontakt Player supplied with GPO. GPO uses the normal Native Instruments challenge-and-response-style registration tool, although this isn't too intrusive. For those users who worry about having to reinstall their systems at short notice, Garritan have provided a 'more generous than most' 30-day grace period for registration. Aside from the copy protection, though, there's also an advantage to users in supplying a sample library linked to a player in this way, since any specific requirements of the library can be accommodated by the software, and the whole package is generally more integrated.
Integration is actually quite an apt word to describe GPO, since Garritan have gone one step further than to merely provide a sample player. The GPO package also includes a MIDI + Audio sequencer, score-writing software, a reverb plug-in, and a VST plug-in host application called GPO Studio, so that as long as you have a computer with suitable MIDI or audio hardware, GPO offers everything you need to get started with computer-based orchestration straight out of the box. These 'extras' will be welcomed by composers who are just getting started in computer-based orchestration, and will surely be appreciated by schools and colleges who have limited budgets to deliver an appropriate music-technology curriculum.
There is no 'full strings' preset, so I made one myself. Working out the note ranges took very little time, and I was able to quickly construct an eight-way Kontakt 'multi' with basses, cellos, violas and second violins sustains in slots one to four respectively (all receiving on MIDI channel one). After tweaking a couple of volume settings, I had a very classy-sounding, versatile and highly playable full orchestral string section.
In terms of performance, with Cubasis VST v4 on a 1.3GHz Pentium-M IBM Thinkpad, the Joplin GPO Demo Song used around 20 to 30 percent of the CPU, with three instances of GPO loading 10 instruments in total. Adding the Ambience reverb plug-in added another 20 percent of CPU usage (making 40 to 50 in total), although this could be reduced with the Quality/CPU slider. Interestingly, though, using Cubase LE to play back the same song required only 15 percent of the CPU without Ambience, and about 25 percent CPU with Ambience, proving that Steinberg definitely made some efficiency improvements to the VST engine between Cubase VST and Cubase SX-based versions.
The current version of GPO Player doesn't support Native Instrument's DFD (Direct From Disk) extension, in contrast with most other Kontakt and Kompakt-based instruments, which allows samples to be streamed from disk rather than loaded in their entirety into memory. This should be available in an update at some point, but in the meantime Garritan recommend having at least 1GB of memory in the system you're using to run GPO. This is sensible, although GPO did run quite successfully on the 768MB of memory installed in the test laptop. More RAM was needed to load larger templates, such as 'Full Orchestra + Piano', which requires 607.44MB memory in three instances of GPO.
The lack of streaming isn't actually a big deal, since you'll actually get more voices by keeping all of the sample data stored in memory. This is especially useful for laptop users, as portables usually include slower drives as standard than the ones supplied with desktop machines, and accessing memory uses less power than accessing the hard drive constantly.
There are two harps, made by Venus (the goddess of love) and Wurlitzer (the god of, er, electric pianos). As one might expect from the man who brought us Gigaharp, the two instruments sound absolutely superb, and practically justify the price of the package alone. There are straight notes, and luscious harmonics. If you want to sequence a heavenly harp glissando, simply sweep your fingers up and down the white keys, then use one of Garritan's 144 harp 'data packets' (a small MIDI SysEx file) to automatically edit the pitches to the requisite scale and key.
Using the wheel for dynamic expression immediately makes one aware of the importance of swells and fades in imparting a 'singing' style to melodies, and it doesn't take long to develop an expressive mod-wheel technique. However, one downside is that when you first load a sound, it's virtually inaudible till you push the mod wheel up! There are other potential pitfalls: instead of the traditional pitch-bend and mod wheels, some keyboards use an all-in-one joystick, which springs back to a default 'zero' position after use. If your keyboard has one of these, you may have to use a sequencer to send GPO a 'mod wheel full up' message (ie. MIDI continuous controller 1, with a value of 127) on all MIDI channels when auditioning its sounds. This will also be necessary whenever you play with both hands!
The straightforward design of the GPO Kontakt Player should encourage users to create their own 'multis'. A set of clearly labelled rotary controls govern portamento (glide), volume, pan, reverb and tuning; a couple of additional controls (Var 1 and Var 2) can introduce random variations of intonation and timbre, in an attempt to ward off the dreaded 'machine-gun' effect of repeated samples. Newcomers to Kontakt will find it simple to use, while anyone who already owns the full version of the player will be able to load GPO 's samples with full editing facilities. Another nice touch is that the player provides eight stereo outputs, so it's possible to route each instrument in an instance of the player to an individual channel on the mixer of your host application, or hardware output if you're running the stand-alone version.
GPO was initially supplied with an OEM version of Steinberg's Cubasis VST v4, a popular cut-down consumer and education-oriented version of Cubase VST 5 with the ability to record and edit MIDI and audio Parts, and utilities like a fully-functional VST Mixer with VST Instruments and effects. A further nice touch was the inclusion by Garritan of a collection of template Cubase Songs such as 'Full Orchestra + Piano' and 'String Quartet', which are empty songs with preloaded instances of the GPO Player plug-in with the Ambience reverb plug-in. Unfortunately, the Cubasis VST 4 application was only available for Windows users, which meant Mac users were a little left out; but as we were finishing this review, Garritan were changing the GPO package to include Cubase LE instead.
The bundled Overture SE software comes with a selection of templates, such as the String Section and Piano template shown here, which correspond to the templates supplied with GPO Studio to preload the correct sounds on each channel. Cubase LE runs on both Windows and Mac OS X and is very similar to the first version of Cubase SL, a fully featured MIDI + Audio sequencer offering a large percentage of the functionality described in the SOS review of Cubase SX. GPO users will probably be pretty surprised at just how powerful this sequencer is, with its support for video, eight VST Instruments, four send effects, two insert effects per audio channel, Key and List editors and a basic score editor, making Cubase LE easily worth a good part of the asking price of GPO on its own. Some of the more advanced features which are not present include the Logical Editor (presets are included, though), the Drum editor, MIDI plug-ins, the advanced score layout editor, and macros.
While most MIDI + Audio sequencers support virtual instrument plug-ins, most score-writing packages you would want to use with GPO don't offer this functionality. One way around this would be to use a MIDI loopback utility with the stand-alone GPO Player, but, as mentioned earlier, this would limit you to playing back only eight instruments simultaneously. So for those people who want to use GPO with a score-writer, or those who want more than eight instruments with the stand-alone version, Garritan have thoughtfully provided a dedicated host application called GPO Studio for both Windows and Mac OS X users.
Based on technology from Plogue's Bidule (www.plogue.com/bidule), GPO Studio provides access to eight instances of GPO Player (64 simultaneous instruments) and a single instance of the Ambience reverb plug-in, and adds MIDI ports to your system so you can choose GPO Studio as your MIDI output in applications such as Sibelius or Finale. There's also a further utility you can run to route MIDI data from your computer's MIDI input ports into GPO Studio, which makes it possible to run GPO on a separate, dedicated computer, if you should need to do this.
Even if you don't have the budget for Sibelius or Finale, that still doesn't mean you won't be able to use a score-writing package with GPO, as the package includes Geniesoft's Overture SE (www.geniesoft.com). Overture is reasonably intuitive to operate, and can handle anything from a single stave of music to a full orchestral score, with a full range of symbols and layout facilities, including the ability to hide or extract certain parts. Scores created in Overture SE will play GPO 's samples via the GPO Studio application, as previously described, and there's even a GPO menu in Overture SE, enabling you to name the sounds used in each instance of GPO Player in GPO Studio, with preset Soundsets included for the Multi-programs and other templates included with GPO.
While GPO has an obvious market for beginners, it also offers a degree of professional appeal for anyone looking to sketch out orchestral arrangements with a single computer. It's becoming a little bit of a clich to talk about laptops these days, but GPO will definitely have value to mobile musicians, since the player and small samples make it an efficient solution for undertaking reasonably large-scale work without the library consuming your laptop in terms of hard disk space or battery power and processor usage. GPO is also a good alternative for Sibelius users considering the Gold version of the Kontakt player for Sibelius 3, as some of the instruments are of a slightly better quality. The only caveat is that using GPO with Sibelius requires a little more care in setting up with GPO Studio (this is described in the GPO manual) and in creating instrument definitions for Sibelius ' more advanced performance abilities.
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