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  3. How many Pcs do you need?

  • How many Pcs do you need?

    M
    M
    We've all heard the amazing demos of Craig Sharmat and Maarten Sprujit.
    Kudos guys, great compositions and productions! The main question is how many PCs were used to make those?

    The VSL sounds unbelievable but the patches are huge and you need several different patches to re-create a full performance of a single instrument to properly replicate all the dynamics and articulation nuances.
    GigaStudio is not only limited in RAM but foremost in voices. This will likely improve with the elusive 3.0 version but until then what's realistic?
    ( Of course the instrumentation for an orchestral cue varies but on an average).

    I've read a fellow on this forum at Media Venture (Hans Zimmer's office) using 9 PCs. Not really realistic for us mortals (I'm talking pros here too).
    I used 2 on my last project using AO, GOS, SAM Horns, Dan Dean etc. but I doubt that would be sufficient using the Pro Edition.

    tia,

    -m
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    Hi Marc,

    Thanks for the kudos. I guess you'd like an answer [:)] . I used 3 pcs but that's not really the full story. I had templates set up on my 2 main pcs so when I added my 3rd a while back I had a lot of extra hard drive space on that pc for my beta testing. The realisitic answer is if I needed to do "Is this Hollywood" again and was organized, 2 pc's would suffice. On "Anarchy", I probably could have pulled that off on one pc. Realize I put nothing but the final mix to audio, so I am hearing everything I need as i go. Polyphony was never a problem. VSL is not a polyphony hog. If you you program your own harp gliss and timp rolls you could start taxing GS, other wise i haven't found it to be much of a issue. A problem for having the whole pro edition on your computers could be hard drive space. 240 gigs is alot of stuff. I guess you could always request to have them send you less programs [[;)]] . a little more info. My 2 main machines are one gig windows98sesystems and my 3rd a 2 gig shuttle with Matthias's tweaks.
  • M
    M
    Thanks so much for the info, very generous of you to share your experience.[:D]
    It's very encouraging to know that non-Hollywood composers with a couple of well tuned GigaStudio PCs will manage to get most out of the library.

    I have been programming my own harp glisses ever since Giga Harp but while it offers maximum felxibilty it does indeed use a lot of polyphony especially since glisses are commonly used at transition points and key changes when there's a lot of stuff going on .[*-)] I look forward for that matter to see how they did the harp in the Pro Edition. Can you tune it like Giga Harp ? Of course I'd used canned glisses as much as possible if they were varied and flexible enough to accomodate various situations. Nothing like the real thing! [:D]

    You mention the issue of hard drive space, can you not split the library up into as many drives as you need on your PCs?

    A few more questions if I may while I have an expert listening [:P]'
    How much of a purist are you when you do your midi orchestration? I mean do you always do your brass chords with the solo patch, or have you ever added say a 4th trumpet part in a section for more punch, that kind of thing? Or do you do whatever sounds good?
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    Marc, let's see if I can answer your questions,

    @Another User said:

    Thanks so much for the info, very generous of you to share your experience.
    It's very encouraging to know that non-Hollywood composers with a couple of well tuned GigaStudio PCs will manage to get most out of the library.


    I didn't know if you knew this, but I live in the L.A. area (My wife is from B.C.). I guess to qualify as a "Hollywood composer", I will need to buy more PC's [[;)]]
  • M
    M
    Not only you're generous in sharing how you work but you respond very quick too! [:D]

    I agree with you, you gotta do what you gotta do to make it sound right even if you break rules. That's my motto too.

    I'm not surprised to hear the harp is good in the PRO Edition, that harp demo is stunning indeed!

    BTW just in case you misinterpreted what I meant, no offense on the "Hollywood composer" thing. No doubt in my mind you are a legit member of that order. Don't have to be in LA but I'm sure you understand I meant that usually only in LA can you guys get gigs where you can afford and justify those kinds of dream setup. (okay the Hans Zimmer setup is quite the extreme example, but the guy does get enough gigs to justify it and he can afford it! )

    I work in the video game industry and I was able to get by using 2 PCs on my last project. I could consider adding a 3rd one but 9 would not be an option (where would I sit anyway and all those fan noises?). [*-)] Or better even maybe they'll okay the budget for a full orchestra recording! [:P]

    I'd still want the library though.
  • W
    W
    I finished a recording of a long orchestral work with only one pc, but it was very difficult and took several months. The main problem was multi-tasking with both gigastudio and the sequencer. I tend to do things on a very small track-by-track basis, so using little pieces of the whole composition is practical for me, though it takes a long time and I know some composers on a tight schedule simply can't do this. The faster you need things, the more hardware firepower you need.

    I now have a system with the sequencer and audio mixing software on one pc, and Gigastudio alone on another. I did this because GS is such a complex program I'm trying to give it as kindly a treatment as possible to avoid crashes. By creating dry cd tracks on the GS pc, you can then take these into the mixing software on the other at the same time you back up your originals. Also, using only one major piece of software on each pc works much more reliably. So I would say that two pcs are fully adequate unless you have to load all instruments simultaneously, which I've never done, especially considering the "record to wav file" function in GS.
  • M
    M
    William you are a brave soul with your inchworm approach and sequencing on the same PC as GS wow [[:|]] you are adventurous!

    I personnaly sequence on the MAC (DP) and I basically treat my PCs solely as samplers.

    When you say you used 1 PC for an orchestral project I doubt you were able to accomplish that using the VSL or did you?
  • W
    W
    Hi Marc,

    Yes, I did finish that recording with the VSL, though I combined it with Miraslav Vitous for the looped tremolos and Siedlaczek for the looped rolls and trills which I had on my trusty old Emulator. It is a symphony that I am going to release on cd.

    I agree with your approach of treating the separate pcs as samplers. Anything you can do to make the difficult computing tasks of GS easier for it, so much the better.

    William
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    Marc,

    A little more info....though I am in a transition move to using Logic, i have been sequencing on DP for many years so our setup is similar. Since we probably work in a like way and are close in hardware power, VSL IMO is the best and easiest option for realizing work quickly once you begin to understand how the lib is put together. The strength and flexibility of the lib is in it's mass amount of articulations. while you can write good stuff the first day you have the lib, there is a learning curve to really get to know the lib. I still can learn new things everyday if I wish to go there and not use what I already know.
  • S
    S
    I've only just got into all this, so still searching for the ideal method... I have DP too + 3 PCs: 2 hi-spec, one old (W9[H]. One of the PCs runs a Sadie editing system - and Gigastudio screws up while that's recording or playing back, but runs fine if it's just 'listening'. So I found a workflow method of 1. while working within DP, programming, shaping, putting together, I can use all 3 PCs to hear the entire orchestra (Sadie as monitor); 2. Recording the result a few tracks at a time from the main Giga machine only into Sadie; 3. working within the editing system to tweak and mix. In other words while working on something within the sequencer, it's good to have PCs everywhere to hear what's going on, but to build up the tracks as audio, 1 PC's enough. I found the performance tool went wrong ('hangs') too much if I try playing everything at once anyway. It seems to dislike patch changes...
    It's still all very fiddly. I'm hoping the G5 macs will change this a little - might really be able to run the whole lot on one machine... [H]
    One question I have with multiple PCs: Gigastudio won't let you load patches via quicksound over a network - only entire instruments via double-clicking on the midi channel. This is a pain. Also a gs file of instruments loaded on a machine from its local drive via quicksound won't load on another machine unless it has them all on its local drive. Is there no way of loading instruments locally with a network-friendly path that will allow it to load on another machine? Otherwise it's a case of have massive drives on every PC!

    All a bit of a fiddle - but fun when it works! [:D]

    Simon
  • M
    M
    Hi Simon,

    I have not tried loading sound over a network but knowing how finnicky GigaStudio I would not hold my breath on that one. One thing I tried that works to my delight was using a firewire drive which you can move around to a different PC as you wish. I've had problem just loading a GS on a different PC (different from the one it was created on) without missing patches eventhough when the drives were exact copies!! I was told by Tascam to avoid this I would have had to re-install each library from the original disk which is a real drag when you already dediacted a couple days doing that for one PC. Hopefully Giga v.3.0 will address that issue (like it will tell you which patch it can't find and give you the option to search for it (like in ACID for example)

    I gave up on the luxury of having all my midi tracks turned into audio. I mean I wish I could have that much control in the final mix but it would take forever when you do orchestral music. ( On my last project most of my cues had about between 50-60 midi tracks X 3 minutes = 180 minutes just of capturing one cue) I mean it can be done depending on your schedule and if you can delegate that task to an assistant or something. Again on my GigaStudio wishlist would be the ability to capture "multiple waves" at once, so you could subdivide your orchestra in stems and capture them in one pass. So you'd get an audio file for your strings, brass, perc, woodwinds etc
    That would be cool! [:D]
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    @Marc B said:

    I gave up on the luxury of having all my midi tracks turned into audio. I mean I wish I could have that much control in the final mix but it would take forever when you do orchestral music. ( On my last project most of my cues had about between 50-60 midi tracks X 3 minutes = 180 minutes just of capturing one cue)


    Hi Marc!

    I guess I'm doing something in-between: With an 8ch output on the main system I can do 2Flutes/2oboes in the first pass; 2Clarinets/2bassoons in the 2nd, etc. That's 3 X , say, 30 = 90 minutes. And not every instrument is playing all the time. If the sequencer slaves timecode to the device you're recording to, you can jump around, recording the bits for each instrument. It's not a file per midi track, but per instrument. So the sequencer plays with all the midi tracks enabled the relevent instrument(s).

    With the multiple machines thing I guess I'll end up with the complete library on the main one, and space on each of the other (2) for the section it'll be devoted to. Something like that. Drives aren't that expensive after all...

    It's a full-time job working round all this! The music you have to do in you're spare time!

    All the best,

    Simon
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    @Another User said:

    I gave up on the luxury of having all my midi tracks turned into audio. I mean I wish I could have that much control in the final mix but it would take forever when you do orchestral music. ( On my last project most of my cues had about between 50-60 midi tracks X 3 minutes = 180 minutes just of capturing one cue) I mean it can be done depending on your schedule and if you can delegate that task to an assistant or something. Again on my GigaStudio wishlist would be the ability to capture "multiple waves" at once, so you could subdivide your orchestra in stems and capture them in one pass. So you'd get an audio file for your strings, brass, perc, woodwinds etc
    That would be cool! )

    I do all my audi down to a stereo track as I don't see a huge need for having it in audio stems unless the project demands it. I do have all my sections,winds ,brass,strings and percussion on the their own seperate buss with individual fx and could put them to seperate audio tracks in one pass if I wished.
  • M
    M
    Craig,

    I just came across demos you did for SI Strings, Kirk Hunter Brass (I did not know this one) Again those pieces are excellent. [[;)]] You're also endorsing the SAM Projects libraries. I have the SAM Horns CD and it's excellent indeed. I guess you've become the goto guy for sample library maker when they want a really good demo to show their library.

    You probably have access to pretty much all the libraries on the market so what do you use at the end of the day? Hmm,[8-)] maybe we should discuss this offline you probably can't answer truthfully on a VSL forum! [:)]
    I suppose bits and pieces here and there since nothing is perfect.
  • C
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    Marc,

    I'm not the guy to go to for demos but I am an option. I really like the medium and the developers and just enjoy the challenge of writing. I've never tried to make money from it. My composing gigs do quite fine. If I was stuck with just one lib to have and nothing else, it would be VSL hands down. This is a very open minded company and I'm encourged to speak my mind by Herb (the president) so I would have no problem using this forum as a place of discussion. My only trepidation is that this is a VSL forum and discussing other libs here is really off topic.

    If you wish you can contact me at craig@scoredog.tv