GRBand Assistant 2.0.6 review

GRBand Assistant is a collection of software utilities designed to enhance the funcionality of Apple's GarageBand product.

License: Shareware OS: Mac OS X File size: 664K Developer: Andy Drabble Buy Now Price: $15.00 Updated: 11 Sep 2006

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GRBand Assistant is a collection of software utilities designed to enhance the funcionality of Apple's GarageBand product.There are three software titles in this suite:GB DrumLoops -GB DrumLoops is a package which is capable of creating drum loops in theApple Loops format ready for import to GarageBand or any other Apple Loopscompatible application.

GB Import -GB Import is a utility which imports standard exs files (as used by Apple's eMagic Logic package) into GarageBand as new Software Instruments.

MidiMaster -Midi Master is a utility which uses information from a Midi file to play music through a sample based synthesizer, producing high quality sound through to your system's loudspeaker.

It also has the capability to render the sound to hard disk in the form of an .aiff file which can be subsequently imported to GarageBand.

Here are some key features of "GRBand Assistant":
Quick and efficient creation of Drum Loops directly into Apple Loops format.
Ability to use freely downloadable SoundBanks for very high quality drum sounds.
English and Italian Localizations.
Automatic copying of exs and sample files into GarageBand.
Automatic creation of Instrument and patch files.
Ability to choose the name of the instrument as it will appear in GarageBand.
Ability to choose the Generator used to render the Instrument.
Produces sound using one or more of Apple's high quality sample based synthesizers which uses samples of real instrument sounds. High quality soundbanks and soundfonts containing these samples can be downloaded from the Internet (see later).
Has the ability to mute one or more Midi tracks. This is particularly useful for producing .aiff files of individual tracks for importing into GarageBand. To import an aiff file into GarageBand, drag it from a folder into a Real Instrument track.
Each track may be edited in order to change the characteristics of the sounds produced. Parameter which may be changed are :
Volume - essential to produce a quality mix.
Pan - position each track within the stereo image.
Program - change which musical instrument each track is produced with.
Adds reverberation to the output sound ranging from "Small Room" to "Plate".
If the "Save to Disk" check box is set, the resultant sound produced by the synthesizer is recorded directly to disk.

Limitations:
GB DrumLoops is limited in it's functionality until registered. It will only allow
drums in the range C3 - C4 to be drawn.
Once registered the full range of notes (supported by the soundbank in use)
can be used.
GB Import is limited in it's functionality until registered. It will import any .exs file but only the middle C octave (C4 - C5) will produce sounds.
Once registered, re-imported instruments will sound across their entire range.
Unregistered copies of MidiMaster will only play and record the first 30 seconds of a song.