Roland S-7x to Tascam GigaStudio Translation

Status: Implemented in the current version of Translator.
This translation is only available on the Windows version; it will be available on the Mac version shortly.

When playing a Roland, a Performance or a Patch is played. Performances are simply collections of Patches, either played on top of each other or set up in a MIDI map. In the Roland Tab in Options, you can select whether you would like to translate Performances or Patches, depending on if your conversion method does not explicitly state what you are translating.

When Performances are translated, the following happens:

• Translator scans the Performance and sees if it can compress the Patches into a single Giga Instrument
• Translator will not compress if “Prevent Performance Compression” is checked in Options
• Translator will not compress if there are different MIDI Channels selected within the Roland Performance; it will instead make individual Instruments within the .gig file and create a Giga Performance file (.prf) that matches the Roland Performances setup.
• Translator will not compress if it requires too many simultaneous Layers to be triggered (maximum 4 on Gigasampler, max 8 on GigaStudio - “Giga 2.0-capable” must be checked in Options)
• If Translator CAN compress the Performance, you will wind up with a single .gig file with a single Giga Instrument contained.

If all the above is confusing, don’t worry. Here is a list of how Translator converts Roland objects:

• Entire disk: Performances or Patches. If Performance Conversion is selected in Options, and there are Patches that are NOT represented in any of the disk’s Performances, they are translated separately into one .gig file per Patch.
• Volumes Folder: Performances or Patches represented within ALL volumes. Objects not represented are NOT translated.
• Performances Folder: All Performances on disk. Patches not represented are NOT translated.
• Patches Folder: All Patches on disk.
• *Partials Folder: All Partials on disk. Each Partial is made into one .gig file containing one Gigasampler Instrument, with a Region spanning the entire Keyrange.
• *Samples Folder: All Samples on disk. Each Sample is made into one .gig file containing one Gigasampler Instrument, with a Region spanning the entire Keyrange.
• Single Volume: Performances specified in the Volume, or Patches specified by the Performances in the Volume. Objects on disk NOT represented are NOT translated.
• Single Performance: Only that Performance.
• Single Patch: Only that Patch.
• *Single Partial: Partial is made into one .gig file containing one Gigasampler Instrument, with a Region spanning the entire Keyrange.
• *Single Sample: Sample is made into one .gig file containing one Gigasampler Instrument, with a Region spanning the entire Keyrange.

*not available in this version

Giga can support a Stereo Sample structure - click here for special notes regarding translating into this structure.

Giga supports only a specific number of Layers and Velocity Splits - please see the Giga Overview for more information.

Giga lacks a proper Coarse Tuning parameter - it uses a Unity Note parameter to change ptich coarsely. However, when the Pitch Track parameter is turned off, there is no more coarse tuning facility. Click here to see how Translator deals with this.

Roland samplers have the capability for alternative looping modes; Translator compensates for these modes.

Translator compensates for the Roland Emphasis Curve that Roland samplers naturally write into their wavedata. For more information, see the Roland Deemphasis section.

Translator supports all Roland S-7x hard drive and CD media, as well as .out file, single and multi-part, Floppy Images created by SDisk. To use .out Images, register them as Virtual Drives. (Translator will only recognize the first part of multi-part .out files.) You then can operate on these just as you would any other Roland drive.