Importing Giga samples

[frankymax]

I've been importing a bunch of my Giga samples into M5 and they generally sound fine after conversion, but I can't get any other the key switch programs to come through correctly. Here's what happens:
1- I open UVI and select the Giga button, then select the disk- I go to the preset of the keyswitch patch I want- I don't select the whole performance as I've found this usually does not work well.
2- After conversion instead of having a patch that gives me say a string sample that has arco, tremelo and pizz on 3 different key switches it gives me 3 seperate patches that are simply arco, trem and pizz on each of the 3 new patches.

Am I missing something? I thought MOTU said the UVI import would read key switch patches- was I just dreaming?!

[frankymax]

So I'm still frustrated with trying to transfer Giga keyswitch patches to M5. MOTU Tech Support told me about using expert mode but that seems to only work for layers using a controller like mod wheel, or a data slider. They also mentioned trying the Switch mode but again, that seems primarily for controllers, not a keyswitch on the keyboard. I emailed MOTU back after their response explaining that their answer doesn't seem to work (of course I may just be dense at figuring this out!) and it's been over a week with no more response from MOTU support. Any help from any expert M5 users would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

[MarkH]

You can also email Universal Sound Bank and they'll help you out. Since they are the ones who wrote it I figured I'd go straight to the source and they are very helpful. They are in Paris, France, so remember the time differences when expecting a response.

[frankymax]

Thanks Mark- that's a great idea- I'll post back when I get more info from them.

[matwell]

My two cents:

I have MachFive and Kontakt. I tried importing the same GigaStudio samples into both formats, to see which one handled the conversion properly. The winner?

Kontakt, hands down.

Don't get me wrong, I love MachFive and prefer to use it. It handled my Roland, SampleCell, Akai, etc. imports fine. For some odd reason though, UVIXtract doesn't correctly convert GigaStudio layers, release samples, modwheel xfades, etc. into MachFive format. The resulting files in MachFive are UNPLAYABLE.

For example, a single GigaStudio patch with multiple keymaps, modwheel xfades and release triggers, after going through UVIXtract, became 8 separate MachFive Presets!! Plus the names of the Presets were truncated so that the important naming system was lost! (Things like (alt) or (far) or (close), etc.)

Until UVIXtract and MachFive correctly deal with Giga files, I'm sticking with Kontakt for my Giga duties. I'll use MachFive for everything else.

Hope this helps!

[frankymax]

Michael- thanks for the reply- it's nice to know I'm not going crazy! I've had the exact same experience you mention with trying to import Giga keyswitches to M5.
Unfortunately, I don't have Kontakt and since M5 works for most of my basic library I don't want to spend the money for Kontakt. As I posted previously, I have contacted Universal Sound Bank tech support but since Mach5 isn't one of their products directly, the impression I've gotten is I won't be getting an answer from them, as I emailed several days ago. Also, MOTU has really dropped the ball on answering my emails about this conversion problem. I last replied to their email to me on Dec 8th and I've gotten no reponse from them since! I really hope they get this together, as it's very frustrating and somewhat misleading for them to say it'll play back Giga programs flawlessly.

[pandrews]

Hey guys,

I've had the same problem. I imported Garritan Stings into Mach 5 but the key switch program didn't switch correctly either. The nice guys at Chicken Systems/ Rubber Chicken software were helping out with the problem. They seem to have no problem with the translation. If the Giga import still doesn't work, I'm going to wait for the Chicken System OS X translator to come out and buy it.

[frankymax]

That's good news to hear about Translator working for OSX. Hopefully I'll be able to talk to those guys at NAMM (they're really friendly and helpful guys at Chicken Systems). I did hear back from MOTU tech and basically they said to load the individual presets on separate parts (eg: arco violins-part 1; pizz violins-part 2; trem vlns-part 3...etc...)and put all the parts to the same MIDI channel; then use expert mode to do a keyswitch trigger for each parts sample. Now, I may be dense but to me this defeats the purpose of having a preset on one part that you can keyswitch between samples. If I have to eat up 6-7 parts of a 16 part multitimbral setup for a patch that on Giga takes up one part, then this is not working! I understand it's only using one MIDI channel but the cool thing about the keyswitches is I can have one channel and part on Giga with all my violin articulations, one for viola, one for cello and one for bass. With MOTU's concept, if each one of those instruments had 6 sample articulations, that'd be....ummm (doing math in my head!!) 24 parts so I'd have to use a second instanciation of M5, which of course eats up more CPU, etc.