Distinction between Gigasamper/Gigastudio & comparison to SB Audigy

[Doc]

What's the distinction between these 2?

Also, what will Giga do that a Soundblaster Audigy with a few gigs of memory
behind it won't?

Thanks!

[Mike Rivers]

In article et> writes:

> What's the distinction between these 2?

Complexity. The original Gigasampler (which I don't believe is still
for sale) was a sample player that played one instruemnt at a time,
chiefly used for it's piano. Gigastudio is a multi-voice polyphonic
sample player that can be a whole orchestra.

> Also, what will Giga do that a Soundblaster Audigy with a few gigs of memory
> behind it won't?

Play Giga samples.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article et> writes:

> What's the distinction between these 2?

Complexity. The original Gigasampler (which I don't believe is still
for sale) was a sample player that played one instruemnt at a time,
chiefly used for it's piano. Gigastudio is a multi-voice polyphonic
sample player that can be a whole orchestra.

> Also, what will Giga do that a Soundblaster Audigy with a few gigs of memory
> behind it won't?

Play Giga samples.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Bob Cain]

Mike Rivers wrote:

> In article et> writes:
>
>
>>What's the distinction between these 2?
>
>
> Complexity. The original Gigasampler (which I don't believe is still
> for sale) was a sample player that played one instruemnt at a time,
> chiefly used for it's piano. Gigastudio is a multi-voice polyphonic
> sample player that can be a whole orchestra.
>
>
>>Also, what will Giga do that a Soundblaster Audigy with a few gigs of memory
>>behind it won't?
>
>
> Play Giga samples.
>

But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
to contain the Giga information?


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Bob Cain]

Mike Rivers wrote:

> In article et> writes:
>
>
>>What's the distinction between these 2?
>
>
> Complexity. The original Gigasampler (which I don't believe is still
> for sale) was a sample player that played one instruemnt at a time,
> chiefly used for it's piano. Gigastudio is a multi-voice polyphonic
> sample player that can be a whole orchestra.
>
>
>>Also, what will Giga do that a Soundblaster Audigy with a few gigs of memory
>>behind it won't?
>
>
> Play Giga samples.
>

But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
to contain the Giga information?


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
> samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
> to contain the Giga information?

I suppose they make programs for just about everything. But if it's
possible to get all the benefit of the Gigastudio program with a $100
SoundBlaster, they wouldn't sell many Gigas, would they?

I suspect that another issue is latency, which translates to real time
playabilty. Giga has its own driver set which, I imagine, was
developed as a result of the need to reduce the delay between the time
when you press a key and the sound comes out of the loudspeaker. If
this is not a concern, like the sounds are used only on playback, any
unsatisfactorily long delays can be compensated for by moving tracks
in time.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
> samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
> to contain the Giga information?

I suppose they make programs for just about everything. But if it's
possible to get all the benefit of the Gigastudio program with a $100
SoundBlaster, they wouldn't sell many Gigas, would they?

I suspect that another issue is latency, which translates to real time
playabilty. Giga has its own driver set which, I imagine, was
developed as a result of the need to reduce the delay between the time
when you press a key and the sound comes out of the loudspeaker. If
this is not a concern, like the sounds are used only on playback, any
unsatisfactorily long delays can be compensated for by moving tracks
in time.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[philicorda]

On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 07:52:28 -0400, Mike Rivers wrote:

>
> In article > writes:
>
>> But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
>> samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
>> to contain the Giga information?
>
> I suppose they make programs for just about everything. But if it's
> possible to get all the benefit of the Gigastudio program with a $100
> SoundBlaster, they wouldn't sell many Gigas, would they?
>
> I suspect that another issue is latency, which translates to real time
> playabilty. Giga has its own driver set which, I imagine, was
> developed as a result of the need to reduce the delay between the time
> when you press a key and the sound comes out of the loudspeaker. If
> this is not a concern, like the sounds are used only on playback, any
> unsatisfactorily long delays can be compensated for by moving tracks
> in time.

As the Audigy plays back soundfonts with hardware, wouldn't the latency be
less than Giga? I've not played around with EMU10k1 cards for a long time,
but I remember the hardware soundfont playback as being one of the nice
things about them.

You don't get the nice mixer, filters and effects routing like Gigasampler
though.

[philicorda]

On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 07:52:28 -0400, Mike Rivers wrote:

>
> In article > writes:
>
>> But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
>> samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
>> to contain the Giga information?
>
> I suppose they make programs for just about everything. But if it's
> possible to get all the benefit of the Gigastudio program with a $100
> SoundBlaster, they wouldn't sell many Gigas, would they?
>
> I suspect that another issue is latency, which translates to real time
> playabilty. Giga has its own driver set which, I imagine, was
> developed as a result of the need to reduce the delay between the time
> when you press a key and the sound comes out of the loudspeaker. If
> this is not a concern, like the sounds are used only on playback, any
> unsatisfactorily long delays can be compensated for by moving tracks
> in time.

As the Audigy plays back soundfonts with hardware, wouldn't the latency be
less than Giga? I've not played around with EMU10k1 cards for a long time,
but I remember the hardware soundfont playback as being one of the nice
things about them.

You don't get the nice mixer, filters and effects routing like Gigasampler
though.

[Doc]

"philicorda" > wrote in message
.. .

> As the Audigy plays back soundfonts with hardware, wouldn't the latency be
> less than Giga? I've not played around with EMU10k1 cards for a long time,
> but I remember the hardware soundfont playback as being one of the nice
> things about them.

Slight correction, the 10K1 is the chip in the Live cards and PCI512, the
Audigy uses a different chip, don't recall the number offhand.

[Doc]

"philicorda" > wrote in message
.. .

> As the Audigy plays back soundfonts with hardware, wouldn't the latency be
> less than Giga? I've not played around with EMU10k1 cards for a long time,
> but I remember the hardware soundfont playback as being one of the nice
> things about them.

Slight correction, the 10K1 is the chip in the Live cards and PCI512, the
Audigy uses a different chip, don't recall the number offhand.

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> As the Audigy plays back soundfonts with hardware, wouldn't the latency be
> less than Giga?

I don't know. I've never played with either. But the thing about the
Giga system is the "giga" part - that you can use much larger samples
than you can stuff into hardware RAM. So you might get similar
performance, but perhaps at lower quality. But it might be sufficient
- just like $100 "studio" microphones.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> As the Audigy plays back soundfonts with hardware, wouldn't the latency be
> less than Giga?

I don't know. I've never played with either. But the thing about the
Giga system is the "giga" part - that you can use much larger samples
than you can stuff into hardware RAM. So you might get similar
performance, but perhaps at lower quality. But it might be sufficient
- just like $100 "studio" microphones.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Laurence Payne]

On Mon, 31 May 2004 21:15:36 -0700, Bob Cain
> wrote:

>
>But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
>samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
>to contain the Giga information?

No, it's not. There are programs to convert just about any sample
format to any other. But the niceties are usually lost, especially
when converting to a less complex format. And Soundfonts are WAY
less complex than a Gigasample can be.

CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect

[Laurence Payne]

On Mon, 31 May 2004 21:15:36 -0700, Bob Cain
> wrote:

>
>But don't programs exist which make Sound Fonts from Giga
>samples? Or is the Sound Font architecture not rich enough
>to contain the Giga information?

No, it's not. There are programs to convert just about any sample
format to any other. But the niceties are usually lost, especially
when converting to a less complex format. And Soundfonts are WAY
less complex than a Gigasample can be.

CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect