Mark and Michael, maybe have a look over at the Northern Sounds forum:
http://www.northernsounds.../forumdisplay.php?f=77

Marrkr, thanks for the sympathy. There was just a post about an article by a member of this forum that is about that very subject. I think there is an article in the Cakewalk Blog about it. Check there and I will try to find it myself. Thanks, my friend.

kitekrazy1     Where did you see/find that 1.8.7? Perhaps that's not the Windows 10 64 bit version.
Do you have a link to it?
My Aria Engine shows a v1.8.6 and my Garritan shows that as v1.860
 
Michael
 
EDIT***   I opened GPO5 stand alone and clicked on the engine update and got it there.
http://ariaengine.com/support/aria-engine-update/
 
It is not anywhere else on the Garritan site yet.

Yup, that'd it. Open Aria, go to the Settings page and hit the Engine Update button. It's 5,7 MB.

Fleer
Mark and Michael, maybe have a look over at the Northern Sounds forum:
http://www.northernsounds.../forumdisplay.php?f=77

Thanks, I think that is primarily an orchestration course. I'm not sure it addresses mixing. But then I've never "taken" it, as I have 5 or 6 books on orchestration that I use (among them Rimsky-Korsakov's), so I could be wrong. There's really two parts to the question: Orchestration, and Mixing. They do indeed affect each other. Poor orch. is going to lead to bad mixes. No mixing can compensate for it. But good orch. can also be obscured by bad mixing. both skills are needed. I personally feel the need for better mixing skills more than orch. I guess the same rules apply though, whether you're mixing a rock band or symphony orchestra. The latter is just harder, since there are so many more instruments that need to be heard.

Sid, a question: you mentioned the St Thomas Strings from DSF. I see they are 150.00. Where do they stack up against other string libraries, like GPO? EWSO Gold? I also have CS2, and obviously they are not going to be that good. But one is always looking for more strings, as even a high-end library will be lacking somewhere. Some libraries are really good at augmenting, for example. Like, CS's strings are slow, they just don't have a quick attack. So I blend them with EWSO or GPO to sharpen them up. Maybe the DSF strings would be good for that, or maybe they have a really great pizz bass. That sort of thing. Any info you could give me would be appreciated.

I bought them on special for $75 if I remember correctly. I was just looking for some new strings as I only had Garritan at the time and the advertising sounded pretty good. They are useable but out of the box they need a little coaxing to my taste. They are nice just to drop them in DimPro and go to work.
However, they do sound a little long in tooth compared to the newer strings that are available now. I find myself using Miroslav 2 and GPO 5 more than anything but I will probably continue to layer them with better libraries. If you don't have strings at all they are worth the sell price but $150 is a little steep IMO.
Michael, I have the Korsakov book as well. I have boxs of orchestration technique books. I started out at age 10 to be a classical pianist and studied thru my teens. You are correct assuming that the same skills are needed no matter what kind of music it is.

I started as a rock& roll guitarist, but bought the Rimsky-Korsakov book to learn, too. I might still have my now very old copy! I think I got it in the early '70s...... Sheesh.
My HD Strings came with a Sonar upgrade or perhaps they were a really bargain price offer.
Michael

I jumped ship to guitar playing thanks to The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix! I still pull out my piano books from time to time but everyone knows me as a guitarist mainly.

I made a video going through a bunch of the new sounds from GPO5. Check it out here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zvKNyG50w
 
If you just want to hear something short that uses the sounds, here is a short song I wrote using GPO5.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx4HfhR-Neg