Hi Andrew,
You have to understand that a full orchestra score such as you describe
will be extremely demanding no matter what solution you choose. With a
dual G5, you have plenty of processing power, now you just need to add
more RAM -- I would say 2 GB at minimum, but more is better.
I am able to get decent playback of a full orchestral score similar to
the one you describe on my 1.42 Mac mini with only 1 GB of RAM if I do
the following:
1) Scale back the polyphony on certain instruments, especially the
percussion. Cymbal and timpani rolls will kill you unless you limit
the polyphony.
2) Turn off the reverb.
3) Lower the sample rate.
4) Turn off scrolling playback.
5) Don't try to run anything other than Finale, iKey, and GPO Studio.
6) If worst comes to worst, you can always record one orchestral
section at a time (winds, brass, perc, strings) then combine them in a
multitrack audio editor.
Also keep in mind that allegedly significant performance tweaks for Mac
from Native Instruments *are* in the pipeline.
Although I can't say I wasn't disappointed with GPO's shoddy Mac
performance at first, I've learned to be patient and, for now, work
around its limitations. It's still worlds better than Finale's
SoftSynth output, and I don't at all regret the price I paid for it
(much higher than the group buy price!). YMMV, of course, but it's
simply not accurate to say that a dual 2.0 GHz G5 with 2 GB of RAM can
only handle 10-12 GPO instruments.
- Darcy
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brooklyn, NY
On 01 Jun 2005, at 4:36 PM, Andrew Levin wrote:
Harold Owen wrote:
GPO is not optimum on Mac because of the lousy job the makers of
Kontakt Player have done porting the product to Mac. GPO uses Kontakt
Player, made by Native Instruments. You need an absolute minimum of 1
GB of RAM in order to manage ensembles of up to 5 or 6 instruments.
Those of us on Macs are hoping that a new version of Kontakt Player
will be forthcoming that will solve the problems we now face.
Yipes! And I have one gig of memory in my new 2.0 gig dual processor
Mac. Does that mean if I upgraded to two gigs that I'll get 10 to 12
instruments? How generous! (read with extreme sarcasm). I'm starting a
score with triple woodwinds, full brass, percussion and strings. I was
hoping to buy Garritan but it seems ridiculous to even try with these
limitations. I'm still tempted to buy GPO while the price is low, but
it seems a dicey proposition since I wouldn't be able to use it very
much.
Darcy, thanks for the notes on *channel* changes to get pizz. I told
my friend and he says it works like a charm.
Andrew Levin
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