Destination - GigaStudio/Sampler History and File Format
The Nemesys Gigasampler took the music industry by storm,
proclaiming "no more looping", since its sampler
software played "endless waves" directly from disk. Giga did this with technology developed and
licensed from Rockwell. Since disk
space is (sort of) infinite, the idea was that no looping
is necessary since memory did not have to be conserved.
Even so, Gigasampler does provide looping, and that is
good. Gigasampler uses the DOS disk format, since it is a
Windows computer program.
Nemesys then expanded their product line to include the Gigastudio, which is essentially Gigasampler 2.0; It has an improved interface, added functionality, and greater polyphony. And finally Giga3 came out in 2004, with many new features
Gigasampler and GigaStudio are very similar - we will refer to them as Giga for the remainder of this article.
Nemesys was recently bought by Tascam; certainly a new chapter to Giga is about to be written.
Architecture
Description
The basic Instrument unit on Giga is the Instrument, or .gig
file. A gig file can hold up to 128 Instruments; they
hold the parameters and the wavedata to be played. An
Instrument holds a maximum 4 (GigaStudio maximum 8)
keymaps, arranged in a horizontal mapping system called
Regions (same as a Keygroup on Akai samplers, except they
do not overlap). You can have a Region for every key on
the keyboard, and a Region can specify up to 4 (8 for
GigaStudio) samples (called Layers). Stereo interleaved
samples are supported (they take up two Layers, of course),
but a Region cannot hold both Stereo and Mono samples.
You can also specify up to 32 velocity splits (wow), but
this is lessened the more Layers you use. The envelopes
are semi-regular PADSR's.
Giga also supports Performance files (.prf in Giga 1.0, .gsp in Giga 2.0), which are essentially macros that load Instruments into the different MIDI channels. Translator presently supports the Giga 1.0 .prf format, which can easily be translated into 2.0 .gsp GigaStudio files within Giga.
There are quite a few commercial Giga libraries that use a special compression algorithm; these files won't permit .wav extraction, and make the file smaller in size by about 20%. These .wav aren't looped - but since when is it important for Giga samples to be looped...
Import Formats
Gigasampler, of course, imports .WAV files of all types,
which is the common method of importing wavedata. It
stores the wavedata in the .gig file format and does not
use pointers to external files.
Gigasampler has an included program called S-Converter which converts Akai S-1000 and S-3000 formats. In fact, it is a lot like Translator on a limited basis. GigaStudio includes an Audio Ripper called A-Converter and can convert SoundFonts and DLS Level 2 files.
Giga1, Giga2, and Giga3 are fully supported. This translation code has been released, with the conversions at Level 3.
Translation Notes
More effort and time has gone into Giga translations than
any other format. Translator writes into Giga 2.0 format,
eliminating the need to convert them within Giga.
Translator also is the only software to compensate
for pitch-tracking and tuning properly, as well as supporting Roland
Performances and Emu EOS Links. You can be assured that
Translator's Giga translations are the highest-quality
possible.
Giga only supports 128 Instrument maximum per file. Certain import formats, like Emu, Kurzweil, SoundFonts, and others, can have more than 128 "Instrument units" to convert. When this happens, another .gig file (with a unique digit trailing the file name) will be created to handle more Instruments. Unfortunately, at this time, all the sample data is duplicated as well. In future versions of Translator, code will be written to optimize this where the minimum of sample duplication will occur.
Comments
Giga is very popular, and is popular, with many users
composing and recording with it. It has many people, even
Mac stalwarts, has switched to this new platform.