GigaStudio Rewired
Learn how to run GigaStudio even if you don't have a soundcard with GSIF drivers
Rewired
GigaStudio is a professional product and requires a professional, specially written driver architecture to run correctly. These drivers, called GSIF (Giga Sampler InterFace), need to be provided by the manufacturer of the soundcard or audio interface installed on the computer. The on-board audio system that's built into your computer doesn't have the required drivers as it's designed for multimedia playback not professional music production.
However, there is another option. There's another way of running GigaStudio regardless of whether you have a soundcard with a GSIF driver or not and in fact you can use it right now, no problem, so go and find your disk. A few years ago Steinberg, the makers of Cubase, and Propellerheads, the makers of Rebirth and Reason, came up with a virtual audio routing protocol that allowed the outputs of one audio program to be routing directly through the audio engine of another. Initially this was routing the output of Rebirth RB338 internally through the Cubase mixer. Over time the technology has evolved and many more programs have adopted the protocol including SONAR LE and now GigaStudio. This protocol is called "Rewire" and we're going to show you how to use it.
GigaStudio Installation
Grab the GigaStudio "Application" CD, don't worry about the content for now, and slap it into your CD drive. When the splash window comes up click on "Install GigaStudio". Follow the instructions and allow it to install the program to its default settings under C:ProgramFilesTascamGstudio. Leave "Giga Content" checked and if you have a second drive or partition then it will attempt to install the MegaPiano II there. This is quite important. It's a good idea to have your GigaStudio sample library on another drive or partition, makes for better performance. If you only have the one hard drive or partition then just follow the defaults or choose a custom folder.
After installation, restart the computer.
There's another way of running GigaStudio regardless of whether you have a soundcard with a GSIF driver or not and in fact you can use it right now, no problem, so go and find your disk.
Before you do anything else go to www.tascamgiga.com and download the latest update to GigaStudio - this will insure the best performance and stability. Running the update may require you to register the software and this is easy to do, just follow the instructions. You'll find your serial number inside the front of the CD case.
If you run GigaStudio now it may bring up a window declaring that there are no Giga compatible soundcards available and it is forced to run in Rewire mode - great, that's what we want. If you do have a Giga compatible card then GigaStudio will be running automatically in "Standalone" mode. To switch to Rewire mode click on File - System Settings and select the "Hardware" tab. Click on the drop down box that current says "Standalone mode" and select "Rewire mode". You'll notice there's also a tab called "Rewire/Plugins". This tab allows you to set how many Rewire channels you want to use, anywhere up to 64. This refers to how many audio outputs of GigaStudio will be connected to the host program, so you can have individual instruments routed to the host program on their own audio channel (see later for further explanation).
As it starts up GigaStudio it will want to create the QuickSound database - this basically searches for any compatible files for use with GigaStudio. You can allow it to search your entire system if you wish but we would recommend clicking on "Advanced" and selecting the "Only include the specified folders" option and add the folder where the Mega Piano II is installed. Update the database, confirm the configuration and you're good to go.
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Author
Robin Vincent runs Rain Recording (UK) out of London and is the CTO of Rain world-wide. In his tenure in the business of PC based audio production he as authored numerous articles, reviews and books on the subject.