software samplers

TASCAM has apparently decided to kill off its GigaStudio sampler.

I haven’t seen an official announcement on this yet, but a post at Virtual Instruments Composers Forum quotes TASCAM:

“Notice:  TEAC America, Inc. will cease further development of GIGASTUDIO and GIGASTUDIO related products as of July 21, 2008.  Product sales and technical support will continue through the end of the year.”

It looks like TASCAM is getting out of the software business completely. If you check TASCAM’s site, the product category for software is completely empty, and everything Giga-related is now in the legacy software category.

My guess is that the growing popularity of the Mac, combined with solid competition, made further development of GigaStudio impossible. This is unfortunate, because it not only leaves a lot of users high and dry, but many dedicated developers, too.

Over at Create Digital Music, Peter Kirn says “Earth to Tascam: please make some kind of statement to your customers, even if it means a series of messages if the situation is evolving.” I’ll second that.

A new site, Open GigaStudio, has been created to petition TASCAM to open source GigaStudio. I’ll second that idea, too.

“Please consider making GS4 open source. The GS community is more than happy to support itself and GS developers can then at least continue to offer their products while maintaining their livlihood. GS is one of the last bastions of freedom for the user to customize and enjoy their sample content to the fullest in a world of locked samplers.” forum member “Freedom”

I’ve signed the petition, and I’d encourage readers to do the same.

Smart Loops, a provider of pro audio loops, samples and web-based recording services, has released the SL Reference Kit for SoundFont 2.0-compatible software samplers and sound cards. SL Reference Kit includes over 350 MB of 24-bit drum samples, performed live on a Pearl Reference kit, and recorded at the world-renowned Platinum Labs in Nashville.

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