Hello to everybody.
I'm an ancient user of Cakewalk, with Soudfonts and SoundBlaster AWE 64.
Then I dropped the music.
Now I'm retired and want (need) to make music again.
I bought a good soundcard (M-Audio M-track quad), good speakers (M-audio), Cubase elements and 2 new guitars.
But the things I knew are absolete.
I'm lost and I fail to find somewhere the informations I need.

I have to work with VSTi, OK.
I have Librairies like Era Medieval Legends Library, Pure Drums - Yellow Tools, ...

I dont really understand the differences between Best Services Engine - Kontact - Independance Pro, ...
What's the diferences ?
They have each differents versions, reader, complete, pro, ...

Could a Good Samaritan explain all that to me or indicate a place where to find explanations ?

I'm not completely idiot and I succed to play my old SoundFonts in Cubase, thanks to "Plogue sforzando" that took 5 days to find ;-)
If someone have a better idea, thanks.

I am impatient to get to work but I have a lack of knowledge (and programs) about these programs (samplers? not sure).

I would be eternally grateful if I could have some help.

Thanks in advance.
Klord from Belgium

 

Hi

Best Services Engine and Independance Pro is basically the same .... developed by Yellow Tools and later sold to Magix. This sampler only works with sample libraries designed especially for it..... but you can load your own wavs into it if you like.

Kontact ... I guess you refer to Kontakt developed by Native Instruments is a more flexible sampler with its own sampleformats. You can also load your own wavs, AIFF and Rexfiles with it.

I prefer Kontakt!

 

Read the manuals or search youtube.com for video tutorials.
You can always compose with the basic piano soundfont patch and then orchestrate the piece with your Kontakt/Engine/whatever you have (once you learn how to use them).

 

OK, thanks but for example, to plays the sounds like
Era II Medieval Legends
https://www.bestservice.de/en/era_ii_medieval_legends.html

They say
AAX native, AU, Mac, Standalone, VST, Win

What does it means ?
Can I play that with Kontact ?

Thanks for yor help

 

NO! Only Idependence/Engine

 

I would never buy such an instrument, in the end, this means that you have to open multiple large sample-based instruments simultaneously and soon you'll need more memory and CPU resources than you have, because each instrument has its own way of managing menory.
If you go for Kontakt Sample Libraries, you can have all instruments inside Kontakt and have *one* platform doing all the memory management and disk streaming, which is always better, from my experience.
Also I would dare to say that the lifetime of the instrument you asked for (Era) is certainly shorter than the lifetime of Kontakt, which means the same destiny as the Yellow Tools stuff: One day you won't be able to upgrade to a newer host OS just because this custom instrument is not maintained anymore.

 

They are all three workstations for creating sample based instruments and libraries.
I prefer Kontakt too. It seems to be the most capable and feature full.
Independence Pro is next then Best Service Engine. How many of those features you'll actually use is the question.

Sforzando or Short Circuit is the way to go for loading Soundfonts but Kontakt can also load .sf2 /.sfz files. Albeit too a lesser degree of functionality.

 

For example: Era Medival Legends, ERA II and ERA II VocalCodex, Forest Kingdom I and II, Desert Wind, Epic World, Gu Zheng ......
you can ONLY run in Engine 2 or Indpendence, I have all of these legitimate, (But they also run to try out in unlocked crack players)
all These Lybraries you will NOT be in Kontakt with running!

Engine2 and Independence are quite similar, as mentioned here,

The other (the most) Libraries of Best Service run in Kontakt, somehow logical because Kontakt simply much better !!!
than Engine or Independence

Before you load these libraries into a DAW read carefully the requirements on the best service side, there it is described still more fully

 

Thank you for your lightning. I can see more clearly now.