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Garritan Personal Orchestra

In the box orchestra available to download
Version four of Garritan’s powerful orchestral sample-library, Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 (GPO4), has been announced. Top of the feature list is a new playback engine called Aria. Developed with Canadian DSP specialists Plogue Art et Technologie, Aria is purported to not only “emulate the performances of real orchestral instruments” but place a very little load on the host computer in heavy playback situations, loading samples more quickly and efficiently than before. Aria also introduces a new ‘Auto Legato’ feature which detects when a performer is keying continuous notes, maintaining their phrasing and trills and resulting a more natural playback, and there are effects for adding ambiebnce reverb and for adjusting the stereo image of the virtual orchestra’s output.

GPO4’s sample set covers the whole orchestra, with a vast array of recordings taken from Steinway, Stradivari, Guarneria and Haynes instruments, among others. The software allows the user to sequence everything from a full orchestra or standard ensemble to a quartet or duo, or indeed any other combination of classical instruments they fancy. Also included within the Aria engine are GPO4 includes the ability to load in custom instrument tunings using Scala format, which is useful for producers working with non-western and non-standard scales.

As well as supporting all the usual VST, RTAS and Audio Units plug-in formats, GPO4 benefits from integration with two major scoring packages: users of Sibelius and Finale are able to play customised instrument groups direct from the scoring page. GPO4 also takes advantage of Steinberg’s new VST Expression standard which is designed to simplify the programming of subtle articulations.

At the time of writing, GPO4 was only available for download, although a boxed version is apparently “coming soon”. Authorisation is as simple as drag-and-drop, with a ‘personal keycard’ file giving the user easy access to their license. For existing users of previous versions of Personal Orchestra downloading the version four upgrade costs around £30. New customers can download the full version for £92 or wait for the boxed version.

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