MOTU Announces Symphonic Instrument 1.1 at AES

Oct 10, 2005

MOTU used the 119th AES convention to unveil version 1.1 of the recently released Symphonic Instrument universal orchestral plug-in for Mac and Windows. Version 1.1 adds disk streaming and support for multiple independent outputs. It will be offered as a free update to all Symphonic Instrument plug-in users later this Fall.

The Symphonic Instrument can load 16 different orchestra instruments into one instance of the plug-in and play them all simultaneously. Users can operate as many instances of the plug-in as their host software and computer hardware resources allow. Disk streaming, which can be enabled or disabled independently for each of the 16 instruments, is a process where large samples are only loaded from the hard drive into RAM for playback when they are actually triggered, rather than being loaded in their entirety beforehand. Streaming conserves large amounts of RAM, allowing users to load more instruments simultaneously and free up their RAM resources for other plug-ins and applications. Streaming also significantly speeds up the time it takes for instruments to load, especially instruments with large sample sets.

In Version 1.0 of the Symphonic Instrument, all 16 individual instruments were mixed together to the stereo output of the track on which the plug-in was instantiated. In Version 1.1, each instrument can be independently assigned to one of 16 different stereo output pairs, which in turn can be routed to any available audio hardware outputs. With this greatly increased flexibility and convenience, users can create sub-mixes directly in the Symphonic Instrument by assigning two or more instruments to the same output pair. Or they can even send each instrument to its own independent output.

The Symphonic Instrument provides both convolution reverb (to place their orchestra performances in stunningly realistic acoustic spaces) and conventional reverb (to conserve computer processing). With multiple outputs in Version 1.1, users can apply the reverb to any output pair they wish.

The Symphonic Instrument version 1.1 update will be available as a free download later this Fall.

The MOTU Symphonic Instrument list price is $295.

For more information, visit their web site at www.motu.com.