Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 Elite Pack - Comments?

I am seriously considering getting the GPO 4 Elite Pack.  I have the lite version installed with my Dim Pro 1.5.  After reveiwing the info and listening to demos online, I am really knocked out with what this can do.  Does anyone have any comments about using this with X1?  I am most interested in the new Aria engine and multiple output setup.  As I understand, each instrument channel in GPO 4 can be routed to a mixer channel in X1. 
Thanks much.
 
Rimshot

While I do agree there are better alternatives out there, I bought the GPO Elite, which,BTW, is the full blown GPO 4, last year. As stated, don't think that any plugin is going to replace the real thing by any means. BUT, I believe it does a very nice job for the money. The results depends on your understanding of how the different instruments are utilized in the arrangement. If you are just looking for some string pad type sounds, it will probably work well for you. If you are looking to getting in to real orchestrations, it may take some time to get what you want. Bottom line: It can't be beat for the price! I bought Notion 3 last year off the Cakewalk site and I was very impressed with the LSO package of sounds that came in it. If they could get ReWire working in for it in 64 bit, I would probably use it over Garritan. But, Garritan is very good and I continue to use it. It does come in 64 bit, BTW! The registration is somewhat convoluted. You purchase at the Cakewalk store, then you have to download and register at the Garritan site. Check out the demo songs at Garritan and see what you think. Some of them are very realistic and some sound no better than the Tts-1! You can tell who understood how to get the instruments sounding great.  

If you can afford the cash, the Jazz and Big Band library is fairly decent to cover any pop or soul horn sections. While the brass in GPO 4 sounds pretty decent, they don't really cut it for more aggressive rock or soul sounds. They are passable but for the money, again, the horns are much better in Jazz and Big Band. Also, people will say that there are better libraries out there and I agree. But as a newbie in arranging strings and horns, I don't think you will find a better alternative for that amount of cash. BEWARE! The GPO 4 horns and reeds sound a lot different because there is a different texture of sound that symphonic work requires. They may not be what you are looking for as far as popular music. On the other hand, the Jazz and Big Band would not fit in the orchestra format as well. There will always be a gap we are trying to fill when it comes to samplers and their librarys. In GPO 4, I think there is one sax! So if your looking for a horn section it is going to be awfully hard to fill. Whereas, you have all the saxs, trumpets, trombones, etc., that you can handle in Jazz and Big Band. Still, Garritan is your best bang for the buck!

GPO Elite for $79? What elite? All I know is that Garritain make GPO4 full version and they don't call it elite and it is $150.
Expanding on what wst3 said,  if you ever wanted to use finale or Sibelius don't get one of the expensive libraries. I have EWQL symphonic orchestra and I tried it with Finale; Finale chokes on it :o.

There isn't a Sax in GPO.  All the saxes are in the Jazz and Big Band library.  GPO is a great starter orchestra library with some real nice sounding woodwinds.  I still mix these with other more expensive libraries.  The Project SAM brass adds to the brass arsenal. 

Instant Orchestra is another great add-on library with many string articulations not found in GPO although all string patches are all the strings sections.  There's also some great percussion effects, mixtures of sounds that can be cross-faded, woodwind sections, brass sections, harp glisses in various speeds, etc.  It's just an addictive library to play with.

Jim

GPO is fine for working out parts in a notation program, but none of the sounds are good enough for a professional final production. It is possible to get a pleasing sound out of it, but it takes a lot of processing and mixing skill to do that. 

I recently posted "Visions of Paris" in the songs forum that was all GPO if you want to hear it in action.

GPO4, 955 mb download, rather small & one of the reasons the library is limited in it's quality.

Rimshot is correct. I bought it through Cakewalk's store then downloaded from Garritan's website. 
It's useful for projects, you can get other libraries later & expand. 

I bought it, and think it's one of the best deals around.  I know at least two seasoned film/game composers who have all the expensive large orchestral libraries... and they still use GPO4 on their laptops to sketch out a piece first.  I've been told that occasionally, some of the original sounds (from GPO) will make it into their final mix - just because it sounds good.  
 
I also have a friend who's an alumni adviser for the music composition department of a college back east, who says that GPO4 is on the syllabus for all composing majors.  (He graduated from there 30 years ago, and admits that he would have given up his first born to have that tool back then).
 
Point being, professionals recognize GPO4 for what it offers - a decent-sounding "portable" orchestra that any composer with even a bit of talent can do a lot with.  Will it replace Hollywood Strings or Symphobia?  Of course not.  Then again - as I mentioned before - it has, on some occasions.
 
Zippsink, just so you know, GPO4 is a download.... but its DL'ed from Garritan's site.  (After you purchase the elite pack from CW's site, a link will appear in your account.  This is just an rtf file -opens with Wordpad - that explains what you need to do to downlaod and register the program).
 
Enjoy!
 

First off, Cakewalk call many of there packaged third party deals offered as addons to Sonar "Elite" packages, itb nothing to do with an inability to use the produts name as is.  They refer to them as Elite Packages when they agree with a vendor on special pricing for registered Sonar users.  As far asIbve seen, they have always been the full product version, never a cut down version at a lesser price.

As for GPO, I've had it since it was first offered as an elite pack.  It's a great package at a very good price to dip your toes into orchetration.  Yes, you recieve a code that is used to download the apox. 1 GB installer, itbs essentially a bunch of zipped libraries in a sel extracting archive which results in a larger library than it might initially seem (if I recall correctly).  It is a smaller library than many others, but you get quite good sounds for the money spent.  It was an investment I've had no regrets about.

I'll soooo have to stop using Firefox on here. It totally ignores my line spacing and paragraph convention.