Gigastudio R.I.P.

[Silver Sonya]

Just got a dismaying email from Geoffrey Gee

The email was entitled "The Future Of Plectrum."


Greetings Musicians,

Tascam announced this week that they are ceasing development of Gigastudio products, which includes the GVI engine on which Plectrum runs. As a result, we will not be able to release Mac Plectrum as planned.

Needless to say, we are deeply disappointed by this news. The timing is especially difficult for us, because Mac Plectrum was functional and nearly complete but not quite release-ready. We're sorry we continued to pass along to you Tascam's promises of completion.

Nevertheless, we are determined to make Plectrum available to Mac users. We pledge to release this collection of unique instruments on a Mac friendly platform as soon as possible! We will let you know as soon as we have settled on a platform and timetable for release. Thanks to your interest and support, we know that Plectrum has an eager community of players waiting.

Also, please note that Plectrum is and will remain available for Windows and Vista, regardless of Tascam's future plans. The existing PC version of Plectrum is complete and self-contained, and is not negatively affected by this announcement.

Best,

Geoffrey Gee

Plectrum Support

Bummer.

- c

[Ben J]

Good thing I didn't upgrade to V4.

GS3 Orchestra was one of most buyer's remorse purchases I've made.

[Saudade]

GS was required back then when RAM wasn't enough...streaming from disk was their selling point. With RAM dirt cheap and mobos and OS supporting up to 8GB, why would anyone need to stream from disk? What with harddisks soon to be taken over by solidstate drives? And technologies that came out which allows minimal RAM use through on-the-fly data compression?

I'm just surprised GS didn't die sooner, because the ridiculously long time they took to move from version 2.5 (their peak) to 3 cost them the entire market taken over by platforms like Kontakt, who cleverly permeated the market by letting many sample libraries developers integrate their Kontakt player. They basically forgot their product's popularity is still 90% based on the variety and quality of the sample libraries developed for that platform. Nobody needs a soft sampler with the most powerful engine and most simultaneous streams when there is hardly any libraries you can use it with without conversion. And GS3 still did not address the need for a soft sampler within the vst host, not a stand alone application which is a nightmare for file mgmt and archival. They waited until version 4 GVI, by the time, all was over

That's normally the outcome when a hardware company buys over a software company, they know nuts how to perpetuate the lifespan of a software which is the only thing that makes it worth paying for: upgrades and more upgrades without having to sell off first like a piece of hardware. Luckily Yomama bought over Steinberg and did not screw it up yet

They are ceasing devt., but I hope they still continue to provide tech support. I will still be using my V2.5 occasionally just so because I have some libraries that don't convert nicely to other platforms.

[steff3]

Originally Posted by Saudade

GS was required back then when RAM wasn't enough...streaming from disk was their selling point. With RAM dirt cheap and mobos and OS supporting up to 8GB, why would anyone need to stream from disk?

hmmm, maybe I am using strange libraries, but 8GB RAM, seems not enough to fit in two sampled instruments. (well, after RAMSave or something like that - yes, maybe 4).
Just look at the average size of the libraries released today and you will see that 8GB of Ram comes nowhere close to loading such libraries .....

best