GigaStudio Rewired
With GigaStudio open and running in Rewire mode you'll see an explorer pane at the bottom of the window showing the Mega Piano II - double click to load into the first slot, or you can drag it there with your mouse. You can play your keyboard or bring up the virtual keyboard and click it to your hearts content and you'll hear nothing. GigaStudio needs to be Rewired through a host program - this is where Sonar LE comes in.
You may have the full version of SONAR Producer, you may have Cubase or Nuendo all of which Rewire beautifully, but for the purposes of this tutorial we'll use Sonar LE. Sonar has the ability to address professional drivers and the multimedia drivers present in the system for the on-board audio, so in effect Sonar will be providing the audio engine for GigaStudio. It should be understood that if you are using the onboard audio the performance in this instance may be quite poor. It's not designed to cope with this sort of task and highlights why it's important for music production to get the right audio interface for the job - however, you'll get enough sound out to demonstrate how it works. If you're unsure as to what interface or soundcard is right for you then please get in touch and we'll work that out together.
With GigaStudio open, launch Sonar LE to the default project. Under the "Insert" menu select "Rewire Device" and then "Giga3" (you can also add rewire instruments via the Dxi Rack). The familiar Dxi option window pops up and once confirmed GigaStudio will appear as a Dxi track and a MIDI track.
Now you'll get some sound!
If you are finding that there's a lag between hitting a note and hearing the sound, or the sound breaks up after so many notes are struck then this is down to the poor performance of the soundcard drivers and you may want to consider getting something that's designed for the job. Professional soundcards, like those from Presonus, Edirol, RME and M-Audio, provide high performance drivers that will enable you to get the best out of your music system.
You'll find 3GB's worth of additional library content on the GigaStudio CD's. If you add them to the same folder where the Mega Piano II was installed then the Quicksound database will be able to find them and catalogue them for use. You can load more instruments by selecting the instrument slot and double clicking the instrument in the explorer, or by dragging instruments with the mouse and dropping it into the desired slot. In Sonar these different instruments are accessed by specifying the relevant MIDI channel, on a MIDI track, set to the GigaStudio MIDI output.
With multiple instruments in use it might be helpful to have them route to individual audio tracks in Sonar. Up to 64 Rewire channels are available and to enable them we need to get into the GigaStudio Configuration Manager. The settings in GigaStudio cannot be changed while the program is in Rewire mode so close GigaStudio first and then find the Configuration Manager under the Start menu (All Programs - Tascam).
Professional soundcards, like those from Presonus, Edirol, RME and M-Audio, provide high performance drivers that will enable you to get the best out of your music system.
Click on the "Rewire/Plugins" tab and change the number of Rewire channels to a sensible 8. In Sonar remove the inserted Giga3 Rewire device and start again with a fresh "Normal" project. Re-insert Giga3 but this time, when the Dxi confirmation window appears, check the box that says "All Synth Outputs (Audio)". A Dxi track will then be created for each Rewire channel and subsequently appear in the console mixer.
You can also create audio tracks manually if you prefer and set the input to be one of the Rewire channels. The routing of individual instruments from GigaStudio is done in its own DSP Mixer. Open GigaStudio and insert a number of instruments (you can launch GigaStudio from inside Sonar by double clicking it in the Synth Rack). Click on the "Open DSP Station" button and you'll see the mixer. Each instrument is automatically routed to a different channel in the mixer and what we want to do is to specify the output routing for each channel. At the top of each channel is its channel number and a small black arrow pointing to the right - click the arrow to open the expanded view of this channel. You can add effects here, alter the EQ and dynamics but more importantly, in this instance, you can specify the output routing. At the bottom you'll see a slot reading "Rewire 1:2" if you click on it you'll find that you can select any of the Rewire channels that were enabled and so route to different channels in Sonar. You would now be able to mix individual instruments from GigaStudio alongside audio tracks and other Dxi tracks in Sonar.
GigaStudio is a program with an awesome amount of depth and potential and this tutorial has only
scratched the surface but, we hope, it's introduced you to a fresh way of using it or if it's the
first time you've used it then demonstrated a little bit of what this program could offer you.
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