CyberGene
I just discovered that the latest version of Aria Player is 2.026 (Apple Silicon Native) and is somehow hidden since on the main support pages of Makemusic they point to the older one 2.001. Here's a link to 2.026:
You probably remember that the last time we discussed Garritan CFX in Aria Player on Apple Silicon, it was unfortunately discovered (initially by Gombessa on PW) that there's an issue with notes being cut abruptly when sustain pedal is used and a lot of notes are played.
However, I just installed Aria Player 2.026 and cannot reproduce that issue anymore! I can play with the lowest possible buffer setting of 32 and have some crazy low audio latency without issues at all. That's perceptibly better than the non-Apple-Silicon-native standalone CFX application and basically means that I will not have to use the standalone anymore and can play in the Aria Player. The only caveat is that in the Aria Player you can't use the convolution reverb from the standalone app but I don't care since I've never used it. The natural ambience mics are more than enough for real reverb.
To be on the safe side, I completely uninstalled the previous version of Aria Player and restarted the computer before installing the new one. The steps are explained here. When following the steps, make sure you don't delete Garritan CFX files.
Also, I set the polyphony to 128 (max one) in the Aria Player:
I also set the "Max Engine RAM allocation" to 2GB and "Inst. Disk Pre-Caching" to 128kB to avoid disk loss on my MacBook Air M2 (with 16GB RAM):
Hope that helps other people. I can safely say that my only gripe with Garritan CFX is now finally solved (although that update has been released more than a year ago but apparently nobody noticed...). Garritan CFX remains my most favorite virtual piano 🙂