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Symphonic Instrument 1.1 debuts at AES/New York

The 119th Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention is in full swing at the Javits Center in New York City, and MOTU (booth #354) is showing Version 1.1 of the Symphonic Instrument universal orchestra 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.

Disk streaming

The Symphonic Instrument can load 16 different orchestra instruments into one instance of the plug-in and play them all simultaneously. Disk streaming, which can be enabled or disabled independently for each of the 16 instruments, is a process where large samples (instrument sounds) 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 you to load more instruments simultaneously and free up your 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.

Multiple outputs

In Version 1.0 of the Symphonic Instrument, all 16 individual instruments were mixed together to the stereo output of the track that the plug-in was instantiated on. 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, you can create sub-mixes directly in the Symphonic Instrument by assigning two or more instruments to the same output pair. Or you can even send each instrument to its own independent output.

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

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

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