Tascam GVI Review
A review of GVI and how it stacks up against Gigastudio.
I have been using Giga Studio since it was first released as Gigasampler. Having the ability to play samples directly from my hard drive was truly a new and amazing concept. It revolutionized the way I and so many other musicians and developers looked at sampling. By not being restrained by a limited and expensive amount of RAM, looping a sustained sound was no longer a necessity. There are so many wonderful libraries available today that were spawned by this technology.
Now, with the introduction of GVI, Giga Virtual Instrument can be available to use right in your sequencer or Stand-a-lone. GVI supports up to 16 multi-timbral parts with unlimited polyphony. You can also launch multiple instances in your sequencer for bigger projects. GVI's 7GB sample library includes instruments from Best Service, Bigga Giggas, Composers Choice, Jim Corrigan, Larry Seyer, Notre Dame de Budapest, Sample Tekk, SoniVox and Westgate Studios.
Installation was a snap. I was happy to have the option to install the included 7GB of sounds to any drive. Tascam strongly recommends putting your libraries on a drive other than your boot drive for best performance. My DAW is a RAIN Element 64, running Cubase SX3 as my host application. It was necessary for me to manually drag Tascam's GVI.dll file into my Cubase VST plug-ins folder. I launched Cubase, and was off and running.
After booting Cubase, I started GVI as I would any VSTi. Loading samples is very straightforward. The main menu for GVI has 16 midi channels which are laid out as tracks across the GUI. Just click on "click to load" and a navigation window opens to get to your sample libraries. It couldn't be simpler.
Tascam has included a very nice "Continuous Velocity Piano" which I loaded first. From there, I went on to load enough instruments to have some fun. Bigga Giggas DX7 had a few patches that I decided to combine in a stacked instrument. The stacked instrument option becomes available after you have loaded a single instrument on a channel.
Tascam has included a very nice "Continuous Velocity Piano" which I loaded first. From there, I went on to load enough instruments to have some fun.
After that, if you click to load again, you can replace or stack additional instruments. It's a really nice way to quickly create some interesting sounds. You can save these combinations as presets for other projects. Larry Seyers "Big and Beefy Kit" loaded with 13 stacked instruments on one midi channel; a very nice sounding kit. I added Sample Tekks brushed snare to this kit and continued to load instruments, including: SoniVox acoustic bass, sax and brass ensemble, Best Service sound spectral, Westgate Studios trumpet and Composers Choice violin. GVI worked great! In thirty minutes or so I came up with a fun little piece called "Swank", using only the included instruments. It was completely mixed using the volume and panning on GVI.
I highly recommend GVI to those already using GS3, and to anyone wishing to get started with a Giga sampler.
It sounds great, and it is fast and convenient to work with. You're given a nice pallet of sounds to start,
and you can build up your libraries from there. I've been waiting for GVI to come out for quite a while,
and it was certainly worth the wait!
Author
Perry Montauredes
Perry Montauredes is a Grammy nominated producer / arranger / composer.
Media
This is a quick demo only using the included GVI library sounds. No other processing is added and it is mixed entirely using GVI's volume and panning.