Garritan Personal Orchestra

[fastlanephil]

I finally upgraded to the new player. You can have 64 instruments loaded in one instance. Is it possible to use that many channels at once from one plug-in. I thought there was a 16 channel limit with each plug-in.

Kontakt Player 2 is much better than the previous version. I hope to soon have six libraries in it. It's a much more eloquent, especially when using multiple libraries.

Phil

[Jerm]

I don't think you can have more than 16 in one instance. However there is nothing stopping you from having more than one instance of the player.

Yes the Kontakt player is vastly improved with its improved routing, effects and much more. It seems very feature rich. The full version of Kontakt 2 is equally impressive. I have added a link to it from our links page.

[amriser]

Where can I find online help to show me how to use Garritan now that I've purchased it? Their web site gives no information on using it with Metro. Metro's support site returns nothing on a search for Garritan. I've searched Kontakt Player's site for info, but can't even find out what it is for and what it's role is in the Metro/Garritan mix.

I can't figure out how to set up Garritan instruments and assign them to tracks in Metro. Isn't there a Dummies Guide somewhere that doesn't require a musician to be a recording engineer in order to understand the instructions? By weeks of trial and error I've gotten Allegro's GM instruments sound font to work with Metro and I've been using that to sequence orchestral soundtrack music. But I really need to step up to Garritan if I can get a leg up on setting it up.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Jerm]

Well, first go to the plug-ins window, find the the (garritan) kontaktplayer2, hold down the control key and click on it. Make sure that the 'plugin is multi-timbral' setting in the menu is checked.

Then in the graphic editor select kontaktplayer2 from the popup menu in the track titlebar. This will load the player and create 16 Metro outputs for the player. Select the kontakt player from the menu and this will bring up the player's edit window. You can select different instruments from within the player. Each new instrument will be assigned a different MIDI channel inside the player. In Metro you assign different MIDI channels to different tracks to get access to all the instruments of the player.

One important thing that is unique to Garritan is that it uses controller 1 (mod wheel) for volume. Metro, unless configured otherwise, will always reset mod wheel upon playback. This will cause the output to be silence. To avoid this problem you need to edit the Metro outputs. One way to do this is to go to the mixer window and double click on one of the kontakt player output names (for example Kontakyer2-3 near the bottom). In the define output plug-in click on the 'upon play reset:' popup and deselect modulation.

Once you have setup the outputs so that it works nicely I would recommend saving the Metro document with a .msd extension. This will make a Metro Stationary Document which you can use as a template. .MSD files will not set the documents name so they work well as a starting point.

[amriser]

Thank you so much! That got me on board.

[amriser]

How do I get more than 16 channels to work with? I cannot modify an output in Metro to go out on channel 17, it won't accept any number above 16. In Kontakt Player, the Midi Channel popup menu gives me 16 channels on 'Port A (from host)', and then the other selections are 'Port B (not available), Port C (not available), Port D (not available).

thanks in advance

[Jerm]

Do not use more than 16 channels with a MIDI plug-in as it is impossible to address anything above channel 16. What you need to do is create another instance of the Kontakt player. Go to a new track and select the Kontakt player from the graphic editor synth popup. You will then have 16 more outputs/instruments to choose from (kontaktplayer2-1 thru kontaktplayer2-16).

[amriser]

Yes, I tried that. But I couldn't figure out how to tell the second set of channels which GPO instruments to play. It defaulted to the same set of 16 instruments the first set of channels went to. Whew, I don't know how to put it clearly... KontaktPlayer only shows 16 midi channels in the popup menu 'Port A (from host)'. I can create more than 16 instruments in KontaktPlayer, but I don't know how to tell Metro to look at anything beyond Midi Channels 1-16, and I don't know how to tell KonstaktPlayer to send anything to Metro beyond channel 16.

Does that make sense?

thanks

Su

[Jerm]

No.

Look at the windows menu. You should see two instances of the kontakt player. In the kontaky player interface, the first instance should use channels 1-16 port a and the second instance should also use those channels. However those are not the same channels because there are two instances. In Metro you should see 32 outputs to KontaktPlayer1-16 and KontaktPlayer2-16.

[amriser]

OK, but what do I put in KontaktPlayer in the Midi Channel popup menu?

[amriser]

Never mind, I figured out what you meant...

thanks so much

[amriser]

I've created 16 tracks with KontaktPlayer but I need more. So I go to a new track and choose the KontaktPlayer from the plugin popup, hoping to get a second instance of the player with 16 more tracks. What I get is a message 'a plug-in with no audio inputs is loaded in the middle of an effects chain. Audio will be mixed in the chain before reaching the output fader'. And now my first 16 tracks show two plugins in the tracks window, both called KontaktPlayer, and when I check the outputs popup, there are no new outputs, just my original 16.

[Jerm]

You have to make sure that the second instance of Kontakt player goes into a different effects chain. I would recommend using the plug-ins window and the effects window. In the effects window select Aux 2 (or any unused aux buss). Then drag the KontaktPlayer from the plug-ins window to the effects window. Or in the plug-ins window select KontaktPlayer and then select the popup menu item to insert on new aux buss. Or in the graphic editor on a new track, select 'port:internal' (see note below on why this may be necessary) and then select KontaktPlayer.

There was a problem with some version whereby tracks default output is automatically selected from the unused pool of outputs. This has an adverse side affect of making it difficult to select a second instance. This has been changed in the latest version of Metro so you might want to download 6.4.6 if you have not already.

[amriser]

Looks like I'm on 6.4.5 so maybe that's my problem. I'll try the upgrade and the methods you suggest. Thanks a lot.