Customer Reviews

TASCAM Gigastudio 3.0 Orchestra

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Remember when you first got Windows Me, how people installed it and how much BSOD, "Blue Screen of Death" you got every time you used it. Sometimes it just would give u a memory error even when you had enough ram to run 7 things at once. Well thats how Gigastudio 3.0 is except - worse. It crashes uncontrollably and as soon as it begins to work something else happens. It either freezes up or crashes the pc. I have a Dual Core 2 Pentium 4 3.04 gigahertz pc with 2 gigs of ram and enough space on hardrive. Everything is updated on my pc and yes Tascam Corp. I turned off virus scan when running this program - not that Avast has anything to do with the programs problems with crashes as a whole. Anyway, it doesn't matter how good your system is; that won't do any good. I built this system especially for it and it crashed like crazy. I don't know what is worst. I can't even load instruments on it let alone get to use it often. I am defiantly returning this and those of you who got it to work I wonder how. I have an Audiophile 2496 Maudio Gsif, and Asio 2 compatible sound card and still Gigastudio 3.0 gives me hell. I decided that maybe Tascam should consider finishing development of their software without just distributing it bug-infested. Kontakt 2 never crashed on me and most other music samplers didn't either. But Gigastudio is a different, one of the worst products I got and it just makes me think what the software coders were thinking when they created this product.... I rate this program a 2 out of 5. The 2 is for the packaging and beautiful look.... If your seriously thinking about getting this program just make sure you are ready for the frequent crashes, and the long wait on the phone for the CSR to answer you, don't bother emailing unless you are willing to wait a week to get an answer!!

Remember the girl who broke your heart? She was SOOOO magic; Aphrodite, Athena, Artemis all in one incredible, beautiful creature. You kept trying and trying and trying.

She'd play you, too. Spend a little time with you, batting those beautiful eyelashes, brushing against you so alluringly -- then blowing you off yet again. But it was always the same story -- you'd end up alone at the end of the day with nothing to show for all your efforts but pain and frustration.

You finally wised up and blew her off once and for all -- and for three months never heard from her, until, day by day, like a nasty scrape, the pain dulled, and you would find yourself surprised that hours, even days had passed without a thought of the pain that had once dominated your entire world.

Then the phone call would come, and, with a sweet, honeyed voice, she'd work her magic on you again, and you'd think to yourself "maybe THIS time things'll be different...."

Enter TASCAM and their magic product "Gigastudio", the reputed sound sampler of the gods. GIGABYTE-sized, absolutely authentic sounds from your MIDI tracks. The ability to create aural magic for the price of a small television set.

And I bought the hype.

Not once, but twice.

Now I'm no slouch with hardware -- in addition to a one-year tech certification, I've got Microsoft MCP and COMPTIA A+ and Network+ certifications. I can build a PC from the ground up with my eyes closed and diagnose and repair virtually any problem.

I've also used a number of different audio products -- Cakewalk, Sonar, Sonic Foundry, Halion, all will generally excellent results. But EVERY incarnation of Gigastudio has only caused bluescreens or simply refused to function.

After shelling out the first 150 bucks and spending months and months of fruitless tweaking and rebuilding, you'd think I would've learned my lesson.

But no, not this hopeless romantic.

When music giant Tascam bought out Nemesys, the company responsible for the first Gigascrewedio, I thought -- like so many other hapless victims -- that THIS time things would be different.

And so I parted with another cool 250 bucks with the blind faith of the lovestruck.

Needless to say, the relationship never got past first base -- the initial installation -- and, since I waited past the warranty date, I am, once again, nicely out of luck.

So I called Tascam right before the holidays.

Getting only a recorded message, I spoke nicely, calmly, and gave detailed information about the problem, along with my contact information. I sent out a follow-up email, along the normal channels.

No answer.

I kept trying, calling long distance at different times of the day, leaving messages with tech support and the main number. E-mail after email followed.

After two weeks, my patience wore somewhat thin -- hell, even a form letter would have been appreciated as a simple gesture of courtesy.

But now, a month later, it seems I just can't get no lovin' from Tascam.

Fact is, Tascam, she just don't care.

And so, as I finally promised, I'm parting company with Gigascrewdio, never to look back. And to all of you hoping to make music with this expensively-wrapped, overly-hyped, perfumed piece of fecal matter, expect the same. You ain't gettin' no lovin' there.

I, for one, will be looking into lemon laws to try and recoup my cash so as to spend it better elsewhere.

And so, that eternal advice still hasn't changed: dump her and look elsewhere. There are a hell of a lot better ones out there; ones who won't take all your money and leave you frustrated at the end of the day.

I purchased Gigastudio 3 Orchestra 11 months ago in the hopes of updating the sounds for my synth. I was intending to use a laptop so that I could travel and gig with the gigastudio. Well... after many, many failed attempts to get gigastudio to run correctly with my chosen components (Tascam FW1804) I needed to call Tascam for help. Unfortunately, they were not taking calls that morning (this was during normal business hours) and they simply hung-up on my call after I had been waiting on hold for 15 minutes. In addition their support personel were NEVER able to help me set-up my system even though I was using every system that they specified on their website (no lie).
Long story short... This was not the first incident of being hung-up on and being misguided by their customer service, but it's definately the last for me. I bought a new keyboard instead. It was much easier to set-up, and the customer support was great.

If you are reading this can can rest assured that I am an average consumer and not one of their competitors because I have never mentioned any of their other competitors in this review. Tascam's customer service is poorly managed and it shows. You'll be happier with a different product.

Tascam needs to take this product off the market, because I am pretty loath to purchase anything from this company ever again, and I am a 30 year loyal customer (3340's, 8516-A 16 track, M3700, DA38's, FW 1804, etc). If this product is any indication of the direction this company is taking - watch out!

I purchased the Orchestra version after reading the rave reviews they published, but these folks must have purchased & installed the product during a very specific window of PC hardware & O/S. Anyone with a dual core will see crashing unlike anything we have seen for many years - we are talking entire OS winks out, not even a blue screen - just launch Giga Studio when you need to do a really fast shut down. VISTA is right out, but even XP will crash ALL THE TIME on modern hardware. You will not get any productive time with the software on a modern PC.

Now, you wil get to see it run if you can patch together a very old (4-5 years) PC, but it will be very, very slow. And it will still crash sometimes, PC will hang, and it will not work well at all with any other sequencers. They say to use SP1, but SP2 is where we are now with XP.
Right now, I am fighting the license scheme because after trying to get it to run on all of these various configurations, I cannot restore the license, and my grace time has run out. Which gives me time to write this review.

Tascam - shame on you. You need to do a recall on this baby, and at least TRY to retain some lifetime customers.

Long awaited (altogether too long), but worth it. This is a major improvement over version 2.5, and, quite frankly, is in my opinion the only real option for large scale (ie. symphonic) sampling work. By my estimation, its improved ram handling allows you to load about 33% more samples on your system - and it load thems very quickly! What before might have taken ten minutes, now takes less than one.
The inclusion of Gigapulse cannot be overemphasized - it is astonishing, the best convolution reverb I have heard. No need for anything else once you have this.
The new piano included is also a nice piece of work - in fact, it is better than most piano libraries available commercially. A shame they didn't decide to sample a concert grand (of the Steinway, Bosendorfer, or Fazioli variety), but it can be applied to many different uses.

A must have for the serious composer.

P.S.
There can be some problems when first installing, but these can be overcome in virtually all cases. Frustrating yes, but the rewards are too great to ignore.

Great sounds, easy to use interface. However, it brought my perfectly tuned PC to its knees. From the beginning it was a challenge to install and register the product. If you read a warning that pretty much says you make one wrong move and you could be re-installing your OS - you know something's bad. After the installation, things seemed to work ok, untill I either ran a scan on my computer, or left the computer on for awhile. In about 30 min machine freezes.
I removed gigastudio from my main PC, and I'm installing it on a dedicated machine - I thought I finally could do without MIDI cables, but not this time.