Hi earth people kontakt noob here,
Which microphone position is best to remove or keep when making lite versions of kontakt libraries
there is Close, Room or a Mix of the two all taking up the same HD space
so removing two would make the librarie three times smaller from what i can tell.

Would panning the close mic left and room mic right be better
then resaving the librarie as a mix version so you could still have and change Close & Room
with the same flexibility as the unmodified librarie
using panning in kontakt and your daw or tools like virtual sound stage to position the instruments
as they should be,this would also save time reloading libraries
as there would be no need to reload all the samples when changing mics
you would just need to change the panning & vol to get all mic positions ?
Look forward to any ideas about the best way to resize libraries.

 

I do that a lot because my computer is old and has very few RAM (8GB).

Generally speaking the best mic is the closest because it doesn't capture the reverb/reflections of the place and then you can pan and apply your reverbs (for instance) to the individual sections at your taste.

If the mix mic is enough for you go for it.

In any case, the quality and realism won't be the same as the complete package. You could also play with the mixer section many of these libraries have that allows to disable/enable mics before deciding.

Another trick is to convert the samples to 16bit. It's a long process but reduces a lot the size. But keep the original samples even if it's only to use them in a final mixdown/render.

Edited: also, and this is an universal rule, always make a copy of your intruments (nkm and nki files). This is so important a puppy and a kitten die every time you don't do it

 

Last edited: Mar 9, 2019

Thanks for the tips and info ,Close mics it is then
converting them into 16bit after that i will test on one instrument
just to hear how it sounds and see the size.
I was looking at the wav files as well after resaving one instrument and seen it has alot of blank space at the end
i read on RT there is a user there that removes the blank space ,think he called it a db cut
what could help some more ,at this rate maybe ill make a black hole
also have a backup of all files not to cause further irreversible damage to the universe.
will drop back in a few days to let ya know how it went

 

Keep for sure the close mics...
You could delete all the other and add your own stage reverb later

 

I haven't tried that, but I bet you can do it in the same process of converting from 24 to 16 bits. Using dbPowerAmp converter, that app is a beast both in features and speed.

Another thing I do after the slimming down is to join again the .ncw files to .nkx containers using "Total Commander" (a file explorer alternative) with an extension called inNKX. This is just convenient, doesn't make any smaller the lib.

Edited: damn, now I'm tempted to do that db tail cut... goodbye Sunday free time lol ... I've to get the f* out of my house ASAP...
Edited.v2: found it, it's the "Audio CD hidden track silence removal" option in dbPowerAmp, now I really have to get out!!

 

Last edited: Mar 10, 2019

Doing a backup of the instrument files is very important for several reasons, one of them is you'll likely do some mistake.

Typical one: when you batch compress samples with Kontakt you usually work with the "original" lib folder and the "slimmed down" one. It's easy that Kontakt uses files (samples, images, nkr files) of the original folder when resaving the instruments (when you batch compress the samples Kontakt still uses the instrument files to locate the samples and it resaves the instruments too)

Also, remember in the samples folder sometimes there is a Resources folder, in recent Kontakt libs is more properly located in the root folder. If it is in the Samples folder you can easily delete it by accident.