Tascam GigaStudio to Akai/Pulsar/MESA Translation

Giga Files and Instruments have several properties which make them a little more difficult to translate into other formats.

Large Size
Although not all .gig files are large, some are. The Akai S-1000/3000 only handle 32mb maximum at a time, and many .gig files are larger than this. Giga files can be this large because Giga's main feature is streaming from disk, thus most libraries that are created throw looping by the wayside and simply make their Instrument large. Not only that, if you are writing to an Akai-proprietary disk, an Akai partition can only hold 60mb maximum.

Translator deals with this by truncating proportionally each sample in a Giga file, in order for it to fit in a 32mb space. (This number can be changed in Options-Sample Sample Mapping, but not over 32mb.) If a loop carries over in a truncated space, the loop is turned off. Translator has a sophisticated algorithm that truncates the samples, preserving the smaller ones and placing the truncation burden on the larger ones. The algorithm also looks ahead and if any "dimensions" will be ignored, it simply deletes the samples and relieves some of the burden that way.

The A-B-C-D Parameter
Giga has the under-used "A-B-C-D" parameter - this is a function where

Typically this is a modulation parameter where parameters A through D are incrementing figures between 0 and 127.

Giga is not the only format that has this - again, Ensoniq had it in 1988, and Emu and Roland use them also.

Akai's - no, they don't have this. This parameter is simply ignored; it's not the optimum solution, but it's the only one, since generally you don't want to ignore the sample reference.

Compression
Some Giga libraries are compressed. Translator completely supports the decompression of these waves, so this is not an issue in Translator.

Otherwise, Giga is a pretty normal format.

The Akai only plays back samples at 44.1kHz or 22.05kHz, so any sample rates other than these are adjusted to the nearest available sample rate and the root key and fine tunings are adjusted accordingly.