[LAU] What kind of sample(er)s etc for classical music

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Lorenzo <lsutton at libero.it> wrote:
> I'de like to have some info/pointers on samples for classical music
> (especially orchestra) in the situations when one has to provide a
> 'virtual' performance.
>
> There are plenty of synths and stuff done with linux for linux, I myself
> use puredata extensively for electionic music, but this is a different
> dcenario.
>
> I've lately tried the linuxsampler stuff (qsanpler etc.), and was
> impressed by the freebie gig piano on the website, but it looks the gig
> format is quite dead at the moment, I wonder if there is a second hand
> market for those, as it looks they were very popular before tascam
> closed down the gigasampler thing.
> For classical music, searching around it seems that currently SoundFonts
> are the best supported form of samples on Linux.
> I'm not necessarily talking of free stuff: quality sampling is a
> laborious and skilful process and paying for good samples is fair enough
> for a (digital) musician, so I'm talking about support: in fact it seems
> that most packages are stand-alones for windows or mac.
>
>
> Best regards,
> Lorenzo.

Yeah, it's disappointing for those of us that were long time GS users
to see what happened Gst after it was bought by Tascam. Bad management
along with a bad economy took its toll and the long time sampler died.

Personally I would confuse the Gig format with the ability to use it.
I expect that Kontakt will support it as long as that product or a
successor survives. Kontakt is probably my next big purchase but I'm
not active enough right now to warrant the cost.

As for orchestral samples there are lots. Garritan makes a fairly low
cost player that actually gets bundled with some other products. I got
a copy with a recent Acid Pro update. In orchestral I don't think it
makes sense to go cheap. If you have (very) deep pockets then look
into the Vienna suites.

Good luck,
Mark