Aria installation - engine, player, plugins, etc.

[pokeefe]

Based on threads in the General Discussion forum I decided I'd better upgrade my copy of Aria on my Win7 system. After fumbling around I have everything working, but I have no idea if I've done it correctly.

I definitely have the new engine, and it's definitely not where I want it. It's in

C:\Program Files\Plogue\Aria

Is that hard-coded in the installation procedure, or did I miss some option? I don't want any installed programs on my C drive. But it's there and it's working.

The player is in

D:\Program Files\Garritan\ARIA Player

That's exactly where I want it, but I'm pretty sure it's there from my installation of GPO4 or COMB2. There's nothing new in that library. I downloaded and unzipped the player upgrade and have 3 directories called 1012-ARIA Player, Aria, and Common. Am I supposed to manually copy the files from these directories into various other Player and Plugin directories?

Pat

[Haydn]

I always select the defaults except for the VST plugin location which goes into my C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\VST Plugins folder. The samples are then placed on one of my sample drives. This is on a Windows 7 x64 install.

Jim

[pokeefe]

I always select the defaults except for the VST plugin location which goes into my C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\VST Plugins folder. The samples are then placed on one of my sample drives. This is on a Windows 7 x64 install.

Jim

Many people do use the defaults - that's why they are set the way they are, I assume. But I have a small SSD for my C drive; I want nothing but Windows files there. I'm nowhere near achieving that, but I really don't like it a product gives me no alternative to placing it on the C drive.

Actually, I'm so surprised that the Aria engine does not give me the option of choosing a different drive that I'm nearly certain I've goofed - that the option is there, but I missed it.

I'm sure that I have to give Sibelius and Finale the Plugin stuff, but I'm less certain about the player stuff. I feel very uncomfortable about manually copying my newly downloaded Player files into files built by the various Garritan product installation procedures unless that is clearly documented somewhere.

On second thought, I'm almost positive there must be some Player installation procedure I missed somewhere. That procedure would know what Garritan libraries need to be updated.

Pat

[Haydn]

Pat,

I have a 64 GB SSD for my system drive. I do put my program files on this drive as most don't take much room. I have Sonar with it's pile of plugins, ARIA player and libraries (not samples), Kontakt 3.5 and Kontakt 4 Player, VSL Ensemble and player, Finale 2010 and Adobe Reader. Most of the libraries use very little space, just the samples take the space. I'm using about half the drive at this point. I'm very picky about what I put on my system drive. I question myself if I really need it before installing.

Jim

[pokeefe]

While I'm willing to discuss forever the value library placement, I'm much more concerned about my installation (or lack thereof) of the player. The Player's "Settings" display shows I'm running the 1.02 Player and the 1.111 Engine. That's the stand-alone Player. I'm pretty sure my things using Garritan plugins (Finale and Sibelius) have the same, or maybe even older, copies of the player.

I'm pretty sure I have to copy the downloaded Aria Player files somewhere, but I don't know where. Overlay the existing Aria files \Program Files\Garritan\ARIA Player?

Both Sibelius and Finale have a copy of the Aria dlls in their Application Data files, but that may have been for the copy of the Aria player that came with those products. Do I overlay those files?

Sibelius has a Application Data directory called PlogueEngine but it contains only a log and some caches. Am I supposed to do anything with that?

So many questions; so little time.

Pat

[Steve Johnson]

Based on threads in the General Discussion forum I decided I'd better upgrade my copy of Aria on my Win7 system. After fumbling around I have everything working, but I have no idea if I've done it correctly.

I definitely have the new engine, and it's definitely not where I want it. It's in

C:\Program Files\Plogue\Aria

Is that hard-coded in the installation procedure, or did I miss some option? I don't want any installed programs on my C drive. But it's there and it's working.

The player is in

D:\Program Files\Garritan\ARIA Player

That's exactly where I want it, but I'm pretty sure it's there from my installation of GPO4 or COMB2. There's nothing new in that library. I downloaded and unzipped the player upgrade and have 3 directories called 1012-ARIA Player, Aria, and Common. Am I supposed to manually copy the files from these directories into various other Player and Plugin directories?

Pat

I ran into the same problem when I downloaded the ARIA 1.111 zipfile from the Garritan Store last Friday. However, the install download has since been fixed. I'd recommend going back there and downloading the current version of the install. If you do this through Firefox, you'll get a single file -- WIN_Garritan_ARIA_Player_1.111.exe, which is the executable that will upgrade both your player and the ARIA engine to 1.111. If you download through Internet Explorer, the filename will be WIN_Garritan_ARIA_Player_1.111[1]. Just rename the file to WIN_Garritan_ARIA_Player_1.111.exe, then run the executable.

Actually, I'm so surprised that the Aria engine does not give me the option of choosing a different drive that I'm nearly certain I've goofed - that the option is there, but I missed it.

Unfortunately, the upgrade install does not give you the option to select a different drive for installation, so you're stuck with having it go onto your C drive.

The Player's "Settings" display shows I'm running the 1.02 Player and the 1.111 Engine.

That's because the upgrade wants your original ARIA player installation to be on the C drive. I realize that you'd prefer not to go this route, but it sounds like you'll need to install the ARIA player on your C drive, then run the upgrade to 1.111. The only other option would be to go into your system registry and change drive designations in the appropriate registry entries, but this is hugely messy and complicated, and I would defintely NOT recommend it unless you know precisely what you're doing. The system registry is a minefield, and one wrong move can crash your system in a heartbeat.

Based on long experience with Windows, trying to run applications installed on a separate drive from the OS can create problems. I found this to be especially true starting with Windows 2000 and its implementation of the system registry. Default destinations for applications software tend to be what they are for good reason, and I generally find that messing around with them leads to more trouble than it's worth. I don't know if this would work, but you may want to try running ARIA on your C drive while keeping the GPO4 sample library on your D drive.

Steve

[pokeefe]

I ran into the same problem when I downloaded the ARIA 1.111 zipfile from the Garritan Store last Friday. However, the install download has since been fixed. I'd recommend going back there and downloading the current version of the install. If you do this through Firefox, you'll get a single file -- WIN_Garritan_ARIA_Player_1.111.exe, which is the executable that will upgrade both your player and the ARIA engine to 1.111. ...


Unfortunately, the upgrade install does not give you the option to select a different drive for installation, so you're stuck with having it go onto your C drive.
Steve

Thanks. The new download worked. And the update procedure correctly found the Plogue libraries on my C drive and the Garritan libraries on my D drive. The upgrade of the engine I did a couple days ago wasn't touched by the new procedure; I assume the procedure could tell that the engine was up to date.

The stand-alone player, Sibelius, and Finale now all say I've got the 1.111 level of both engine and player.

The only thing different is the the desktop icon is pointing to the 32 bit version of the player rather than the 64 bit version. I can't think of any reason I should care.

Pat