"Switching over to Giga changed everything. It was one of the two biggest revolutions of the last decade - GigaStudio for my samples and digital recording right into my sequencer. Those two things, then digital video, really turned everything around. Each one of these was a major step in streamlining my setup. For the Gigas, I was accessing everything from a computer screen. It made it real easy to go, I want to try this, or this, or this. I can audition 20 sounds really quickly, having a lot more places to put them. Customizing my templates for each show became much easier, simply because once I had all my sound libraries on Giga, I felt like I had everything at my fingertips all the time. Rather than going through SCSI drives and searching through multiple folders, and having to save the entire bank again just because I made one change."

Harry Gregson-Williams's LA studio complex, Wavecrest Music, commenced operations in Venice Beach in August 2003, and comprises three floors of editing suites, mix rooms and a live room, as well as Harry's own studio on the top level. This houses the following gear:

Sequencing and digital audio

*Steinberg Cubase SX and Ableton Live running on dual 3.6GHz Xeon server with 4GB RAM, two RME HD*SP 9652 soundcards, 75GB mirrored SATA system drives and 400GB mirrored SATA audio/sample storage drives. MIDI is streamed over LAN to Gigastudio PCs, and an Emagic Unitor 8 and AMT8 are used for hardware synths. *Pro Tools HD Accel system running on dual 2GHz Apple G5, with one 192 Analog and seven 192 Digital interfaces.

Samplers

*14x Emu E4X. *24x Roland S760. *7x 3.0GHz Pentium 4 PCs with 80GB SATA system drives, RME HDSP 9652 soundcards and 250GB SATA sound drives with custom and commercial sound libraries, running Tascam Gigastudio 3.

Software synths and plug-ins

*Arturia ARP 2600, Minimoog V and CS80. *Antares Filter and Auto-Tune. *Applied Acoustics Lounge Lizard. *Gmedia Imposcar and Oddity. *GRM Tools. *Korg Legacy Collection. *Native Instruments Absynth 3, Battery 2, FM7, Kontakt 2, Pro 53, Reaktor 4. *Ohm Force Ohm Boyz. *Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, Atmosphere and Trilogy. *Steinberg D'Cota, X-Phraze, Virtual Guitarist, VG Electric Edition, Groove Agent and Halion.

Hardware synths

*Access Virus, Indigo 2 and Redback. *Clavia Nord Rack, Nord 3 KB and Nord Modular. *Korg Trinity Pro X, Wavestation A/D and M1R. *Novation Supernova II Pro. *Roland JP8080, JD990, JV1080 and MKS80. *Studio Electronics SE1, ATC1 and Omega 8. *Waldorf Q, Microwave II, Microwave XT and Pulse.

Recording, mixing & outboard

*Avalon 727 preamp. *Eventide DSP4000 effects. *Lexicon PCM80 and 90 reverbs. *Quested HQ108 speakers in 5.1 setup. *5x Yamaha 02R digital mixers.

"His other six PCs are used for Tascam Gigastudio. He uses his G5 for running Mac-specific music software (such as Audio Ease Altiverb 5), and his G4 for his Digidesign Pro Tools|HD system (he's currently running v. 6.7)" (Page 60).

List of Grant Kirkhope's tools includes "Guitar, Keyboard, Cubase 4, Pro Tools HD, GigaStudio, Sound Forge, etc."

The Myst III score was largely written at Jack's home studio, so I asked him about his equipment and sounds of choice. "I use a G4 Mac with Digital Performer because I've just been using that forever, and I have GigaStudio on a PC. I use the Garritan Orchestral Strings library, and I've got a couple of Akai samplers and a JV2080 stuffed full of cards. I'm looking forward to the Vienna Symphonic Library — I heard a demo of it at the AES show here in LA in October and it blew my mind. It's all about trying to make the music sound as real as you can before fleshing it out into the orchestration."

"My main software tools of choice are all PC based and consist of Sony Vegas, Sony Sound Forge, Cakewalk, Nuendo & GigaStudio. I have superfast PC’s which are the latest designs powered and built by both AMD & Intel. I’ve always preferred JBL speakers and Mackie mixing consoles. My keyboard controller is currently a Yamaha Motif – 8 which I really like. Oh yeah… and they don’t call it the Music BUSINESS for nothing! So two other widely used software programs are Excel & Word!"

Talks about using gigastudio in the video from '03:23' and shows it on screen multiple times, from '04:45' and onwards.

"I generally use Emagic’s Logic software on a Mac workstation, and have 3 PC computers on the side that act like instruments, because I run a software program called “Gigastudio” on them. This software basically turns each PC into a powerful sampler. Into each of the Gigastudio computers, I load instruments from various libraries, such as:

• Miroslav Vitous Symphonic Orchestra (for solo instruments- especially winds- and some percussion)
• Peter Siedlaczek’s Advanced Orchestra
• Garritan Orchestral Strings
• Vienna Symphonic Library

…And some others, too. Just lately, I’ve also been using the “EXS24” software sampler, which allows you to load in many of the same types of instruments directly in Logic on the Mac, which is very convenient because everything is located within the same environment, and you avoid the complication of all the extra cables."

"My home studio is a small, acoustically-treated room (see picture below). I have a Mac running Logic Pro sequencing software and a PC running the Gigastudio sampler -- this helps share the overall processing load (the Mac is running all kinds of other sample libraries as well). There's some external hardware: a few synthesizers and some processing equipment. The Alesis QS8 is my only keyboard at the moment."

"Roland JV2080 + expansions, EMu Proteus, AKAI S1000 but we built our own samples for the games… I had an Emulator IV for PDZ but switched to Gigasampler. Also JP8000 on that game….but soft synths were starting to happen…"