KVR Audio

SAW75 · Post by **SAW75** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 12:29 pm

I guess Kontakt is the only way to deliver sample sets nowadays. Pretty sad that developers would give Native Instruments a virtual monopoly on this.

Why not find other formats to share your work in? I'm kinda tired of missing out on all this great stuff and don't plan on being a Native Instruments customer any time soon.

The_Hidden_Goose · Post by **The_Hidden_Goose** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:01 pm

The scripting in it enables developers to keep pushing it further than most (or any?) or sampler.

I don't like the idea of monopolies either, and feel it's bad for customers in the long run. But there's got to be something that ticks all the 3rd party content developers boxes before it can compete, and currently there doesn't seem to be.

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:06 pm

Kontakt is the closest thing we have to a standard. While I agree that monopolies are bad, I also think standards are great. Otherwise developers would need to code up versions of their libraries for multiple samplers which could get expensive fast with big libraries. Plus, does any other sampler offer the flexibility in terms of GUI and scripting that Kontakt does? I wouldn't be surprised if that's another major reason a Kontakt has become so dominant. Think about the scripting process too: if other samplers even allowed scripting to the level Kontakt does, you'd still have to learn how to script or hire someone else that did (both of which have costs).

Kontakt is the Micro USB cable of samplers. It's just easiest for everyone if your product uses it.

I don't know what your beef is with NI, but the above is unlikely to change, so you'd be far better just giving in and buying Kontakt instead of wishing and hoping that other developers support more formats. With complex libraries, it's just not gonna happen.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:12 pm

Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:Plus, does any other sampler offer the flexibility in terms of GUI and scripting that Kontakt does?

MOTU MachFive 3 does, but it still has some catch-up to do regarding DFD streaming, RAM and CPU usage, which are currently much in Kontakt. Kontakt supports multicore processing as well, whereas MF3 doesn't.

MF3's scripting can do a lot of nifty things Kontakt's scripting cannot do, however KSP seems to contain a lot more low-level optimizations than MF3's Lua engine, which results in better performance, of course.

Bubbamusic · Post by **Bubbamusic** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:18 pm

I have always had a problem with Kontakt's sound quality. It was upgraded a few editions back, but still sounds a little "dead" to me. The old VSampler still sounds better to me reproducing the same samples.

audiothing · Post by **audiothing** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:23 pm

MachFive 3 is a good alternative at least compared to Kontakt's features, but iLok could be a huge deterrent for many users. We released one library for MF3, and we plan to port more in the future, but so far it's clearly not worth the effort (including the learning curve of a new system/script language). SFZ is a nice format too, there are several free players out there, but it lacks two huge selling points: the script (essential for some libraries) and so the possibility to build a nice custom GUI. What you are going to get with a SFZ version is probably a lite/stripped down version of a library. Imagine all those guitar and bass libraries with complex scripted engines.

So to answer your questions: Why not find other formats to share your work in?
I think that at least for small developers is not worth the effort.
Big companies/developers can afford custom engines or Kontakt Player licensing.

As a user/composer myself (and basically 99% of all the composers I know) I mainly use Kontakt and proprietary engines like Vienna Instruments, I don't have the necessity to use anything else to load my libraries.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:25 pm

Bubbamusic wrote:I have always had a problem with Kontakt's sound quality. It was upgraded a few editions back, but still sounds a little "dead" to me. The old VSampler still sounds better to me reproducing the same samples.

I tested various samplers and when gain staging was matched properly, they all nulled.

Now, utilizing filters, effects and modulation would of course impart different kinds of processing to the sound, and to that I say - Kontakt 5's 30-something new filters are VASTLY improved over previous versions, and new effect additions are really really good.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:36 pm

SAW75 wrote:Why not find other formats to share your work in? I'm kinda tired of missing out on all this great stuff and don't plan on being a Native Instruments customer any time soon.

One interesting other platform could be Plogue's Aria engine, as that allows for (at least something that looks like) scripted GUI's: http://ariaengine.com/overview/sfz-format/

The free Sforzando plug by Plogue goes to show how it works in practice: http://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando/

Unfortunately after Sforzando was launched back in 2012, there has been more or less released no third party libraries for it

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:54 pm

It's too bad. Personally never liked Kontakt much. I think the user interface is very clunky and not very pleasant to use. It's also a huge load of bloat in every sense (like all NI stuff). Also I'm not fan of working with multi-gigabit libraries in general. But unfortunately as far as the amount of libraries is concerned there is no competition.

Alternative would be going with something else and doing your own sound design.
DirectWave is quite good in that regard. It can also sample and import from various formats too. I have recently converted a bunch of old sampler CD's to Directwave and have been loving it. Especially using them as a foundation for new sounds.

Quite sad that E-MU screwed up with EmulatorX3. This must be one of the worst managed instruments in the history of VSTi. It was such a nice product overall but ruined by too high price, underdevelopment, anal copy protection and somewhat unpleasant user interface (better than Kontakt though). In many ways this was ahead of everything else at its time. It had excellent sound quality right up there with E-MU's rack modules and samplers. It had multi-core and 64bit support (for those who care) before everyone else. It had huge potential for sound design with its support for real sampling and Z-plane filters. If it would not have been so badly mismanaged Emulator X3 could have been a serious competitor to Kontakt.

SFZ is also good format and can be read by Dimension, Rapture, Directwave and many other programs.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:56 pm

robotmonkey wrote:It's also a huge load of bloat in every sense (like all NI stuff).

Completely untrue. Kontakt is extremely leanly coded for what it does.

robotmonkey wrote:and somewhat unpleasant user interface (better than Kontakt though)

Err... No. X3 has a horrid interface!

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:59 pm

EvilDragon wrote:
robotmonkey wrote:It's also a huge load of bloat in every sense (like all NI stuff).
Completely untrue. Kontakt is extremely leanly coded for what it does.

+1 NCW files are great, like packed wav files.

Those wanting to avoid bloated files, should rather give IK Multimedia and Sample Tank a beating. I got 40GB of ST2 files on my HDD which I believe could be slimmed down to at least 25GB had they had some similar packing system as NCW, hopefully that will come in ST3 ?

murnau · Post by **murnau** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:02 pm

Also I'm not fan of working with multi-gigabit libraries in general.

thats not because of kontakt but because of the sampled content. have enough a few 100mb or less nki here.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:07 pm

On my list, but still not invested in

But I believe tools like The Shell can help show how well Kontakt also can work with regular one shot samples, and that Kontakt is not just suited for the multi-sampled giga-libs.

http://www.hollowsun.com/HS2/products/g ... /index.htm

SAW75 · Post by **SAW75** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:59 pm

Aria seems like an excellent alternative for developers.

NI installs are rather bloat-y but that's not really my "beef" with them. They are just generally horrible people and I find it odd that developers en masse would add value to their product like it's the universal solution sent down from god. Perhaps NI should be paying developers for popularizing their product to such a degree. All these add-ons are certainly a selling point for Kontakt and it makes me cringe. SFZ must be considered or something otherwise developers are just throwing money in NI's pocket.

I don't even think most of the third party products are even using the scripting you guys are talking about. There are tons of simple sample sets that are only available in Kontakt format. It's a shame.

stanlea · Post by **stanlea** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:08 pm

There's maybe another reason : protection. With the latest NI format, it's not so easy to pirate libraries and there is no possibility to have a kontakt-like software. The program is protected, and the format is crippled. On the other hand, a sfz library is no more than a bunch of samples with a text file : zero protection. I understand why companies prefer the Kontakt way : more power, less piracy.
I believe anyway that sfz is a very powerful specification,and could be more used than it is. Recently, I bought the Muted Harmon Library for Waves Factory and they provide the NK files but also the raw wav, so if you want to build your own library for any format you want, it's possible, given a big amount of time. And if you're honest, you don't redistribute it,of course.

I guess Kontakt is the only way...