I'm so sorry to hear these reports, since I've been optimistic about the sound quality of GPO's samples and eager to try them. I've just been waiting for the version with the jazz instruments. Now, I'm not so sure (Steve Wright: "I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.") I'll be able to use the software. I await further reports about what the gurus think about the chances of things working in a single processor 1.8 GHz G5 - now with 1.5 GB RAM.
Chuck
On Jan 16, 2005, at 6:08 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote:
On 16 Jan 2005, at 07:49 PM, Bonnie Harris wrote:Chuck Israels
Gerald,
Is your G5 dual or single processor? And is the stuttering a 'feature' regardless of size of project? I rarely do anything so large, but I like the sounds so have been considering GPO. Yours and Darcy's posts are causing me to rethink. I'm on Mac G5 1.8, 1GB RAM, can always up the RAM but wonder if I want to with these problems and pay the same price as a PC user minus the sequencer. Any Mac users know of comparable orchestra sounds for similar price?
Thanks,
Bonnie
Well, after browsing the Northern Sounds forums, it seems that the culprit is as much Native Instruments and their customized GPO Kontakt Player as it is the demands of the GPO sounds per se. Native Instruments hate Macs -- that much is clear from the crappy nonstandard interface design of Kontakt Player -- and apparently their software performs very poorly on Macs versus PCs, since it is not optimized for G4s or G5s. The attitude of the people at NI towards this problem was summed up by one Northern Sounds contributor as "Get over it and get a PC."
There are AFAIK no "comparable" orchestra sounds for anywhere near the same price. But my perusal of the Northern Sounds forum did nothing to make me any less pessimistic about GPO's hardware demands.
The take-home message from the Northern Sounds forums seems to be essentially this:
1) Forget about using GPO at all on *any* Mac laptop, up to and including the top-of-the-line 17" PowerBook 1.5 GHz G4.
2) Forget about using GPO at all on the eMac or [sigh] Mac mini. (I sincerely hope this is an exaggeration, and I will try it myself and let you all know, but that's the impression I'm getting so far.)
3) GPO *might* be borderline usable on a single 1.6 GHz G5 (iMac or PowerMac) if you have at least 1.5 GHz of RAM and stick to chamber music (max 10 voices) and are willing to take the following steps:
• reduce the sample rate to 32 KHz.
• bypass the Ambience reverb.
• maximize the buffer size and latency.
• drastically reduce the maximum polyphony of the strings, piano, harp, and percussion, and always use the "Lite" version of the piano.
• accept that your in-Finale playback is always going to be full of pops. Always record to file, and hope that the resulting AIFF file will turn out okay. If not, go back and lower your settings some more (by eliminating or simplifying timpani or cymbal rolls, for instance) and try again.
• use every trick in the book to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your Mac -- don't run anything except Finale and GPO (not even QuicKeys), turn off scrolling in Finale and close all documents except the active one, turn off disk journaling and AirPort and Bluetooh and file sharing and everything else you can think of, close all possible windows and minimize the rest, except Finale's playback window (minimize the Finale document window) and the "Record to File" window in GPO Studio (minimize the main GPO studio window).
4) I would guess that you would need, at minimum, a dual 1.8 GHz PowerMac G5 with 2-3 GB of RAM just to *load* an entire orchestra into GPO Studio -- and playback from within Finale will probably still be full of pops.
5) Maybe, just maybe, with a dual 2.5 GHz G5 maxed out with 8 GB of RAM, you might be able to get full-orchestra 44.1 kHz playback from GPO from within Finale using the default GPO settings (although from what Jerry is saying, even that isn't a sure thing). And heck, that little setup would only set you back $6,849.00 (monitor not included). Plus $225 for the GPO software, of course.
6) However, GPO apparently runs just fine on a $1000 budget PC.
The sound quality, features, ease of use, and Finale integration of GPO are outstanding, no question. But the "Recommended Requirements" on the box (G4 733 Mhz, 1 GB RAM) are nothing but a pack of lies. In fact, they are so misleading as to be insulting.
Maybe in another three years, I will be able to afford a computer that can actually run this software.
- Darcy
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