Tascam Axe Giga Development

US Support ends Dec 31st 2008 31/07/08

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The GigaStudio sound system has been a long time favourite of film composers with access to some pretty stunning orchestral libraries with advanced key switching and other great features. Generally speaking, a dedicated computer was required to run the software allowing massive sound libraries to be loaded and played via dedicated mulitple output soundcards giving a monster system. For many, it's was the only way to load up a large orchestral sound palette in one go. The introduction of the Native Instruments Kontakt engine, which allows sound library developers to have their content embedded and protected buy the NI system has meant Gigastudios market share has been in decline. According to the forums, since the introduction of Gigastudio 4, there has been little advancement in development and bug fixes which is always a bad sign. Last week Tascam announced that all further development of the GS system was to be stopped, with support and sales running till the end of the year. Gigastudio has now been moved to the "Legacy" area of the Tascam website, so it looks like curtains. Many composers who've invested many thousands in their GS libraries will now be left unsupported (come the end of the year), and will need to move over to other sample playback systems to get new sounds. Shame, it was a great product.