Dan Dean Solo Woodwinds Giga

I've been composing music for 34 years. I have been successful in television, video, and computer game scoring. My primary interest is in art music for the virtual orchestra. I have 6 CDs commercially released. I have two gigastudio computer setups. I've worked with the Dan Dean Solo Wind library for about a year and a half, full-time, every day.

I monitor using Mackie 824s, Sony headphones and have a Layla24 sound card. I use a Mackie D8B mixing console.

The Dan Dean Solo Strings have proven to be problematic in some cases, but in general it is a good library. The flute is probably the weakest instrument. This may be because of the instrumentalist or perhaps the instrument itself. I am getting good results but my major gripe with the library is that the user cannot go into the wav files (via the Giga instrument editor and a good 2 track editor such as Wavelab) and alter the sounds. This is because of a compression scheme which has the result of shutting out the user from adding gain, EQ or anything else to the waves. This is one of the strong points of Giga, so the Dan Dean Solo Strings don't utilize an important feature.

I probably will eventually replace this library. Though winds don't have the bite or the intensity of brass, they nevertheless should have a quality of expression that isn't dull. While some of the Dan Dean winds are very nice (oboe and english horn) others are not quite as useful. As I said, my biggest complaint is the flute, the staccato patch particularly is not crisp as a good staccato should be (sometimes).

Jerry Gerber