Kontakt truly needs a complete ground up rewrite of all the code to bring it into the 21 century... Its an amazing tool, but the GUI is like browsing a webpage from 1994 on dialup through AOL...

 

Winer doesnt get enough credit in the industry...

 

Who in the world dislikes Kontakt? it's the de facto sampler in this day and age.

 

Hey, look.
Just read through the thread. We know this. It's an old thread I accidentally resurrected today whilst responding to something that caught my eye whilst searching for something else.
I'd forgot about the thread title and content, which I read back in 2019, before you joined.
If I'd thought about it, I would not have commented and necro'd it!
Due to your sort of comment arising and starting stuff again.
Lets not let it descend into what actually happened in this thread! If you read it.
The op member actually left that account, as you can see...

Let's talk positive, interesting points, rather than the obvious statements...

Like, Kontakt is not a sampler. lol.
It is a sample player and synth.

 

Last edited: Apr 12, 2021

You gotta Love Kontakt, it has some of the Best libs and the performance/stability is great,
and well in this biz it's pretty much the only way..

However there's a couple of things that I miss, or could be improved:
-A MIDI CC, or any other method for Purging all Samples in All Kontakt instances from your DAW,
and with One single command or click/push of a button..

This would be Super Handy to Free all the possible Memory, and for many practical reasons,
and I don't understand how is it not a feature from day one..

-The quality of some of the FX like EQs could be improved;
Some effects are great/good/interesting,
but I found if I replicate the stock EQ values of a given instrument in an external high quality EQ,
the sound can improve considerably.. so that's something to take in account if your instruments use a lot of built-in EQ..
I always use external EQs and Comps, so there's that.

However it does a good job with other FX that give Color, like saturation and stuff,
and ofc Convo reverbs, which can be excellent/very fitting sometimes..

-The way the internals of an instrument are presented (samples, layers, scripts, etc..),
is quite Cramped and obfuscated, hard to understand at a glance if you need to modify stuff..
but yeah what can you do.. "this is a neeerds world"

-The batch resaving is indeed very Effective,
but I don't really understand wtf is it doing that it cannot do by just listing/knowing where the sample files are located.
Why does it need to go one by one etc, is it logging the actual HDD sectors?

-Memory, always Memory!
Some instruments take a lot of memory even if totally purged,
and this pre-caching can be quite significant when running lots of libs/really big ones..

I've got 32GB and I'm telling you,
with Orchestral libs they get nom nom nommed like in no-time

My fault ofc, If I only had 64gb things will improve considerably,
but then it will be 128, 256..

 

Last edited: Apr 14, 2021

It's true that backwards compatibility must make this harder, but yeah, it could improve. But the recent news about NI aren't exactly encouraging

 

I feel you. Like, a lot. To be fair though, some things are not Kontakt's fault

This very hard to do because a plugin can't communicate with others inside a DAW. The only way is to make some tricky IPC (Inter Process Communication) stuff. For instance, iZotope's Relay allows to communicate multiple tracks to one iZotope Ozone.

That's also true. I feel like the quality and performance are limited on purpose. Like a NI version of T-Racks but Lite. On the performance note, I found that Kontakt uses the free FFTW library for doing FFTs. Which includes like half of the effects if not more. All the effects/DAWs that a big company like NI makes use Intel's FFT library which is quite faster. But expensive. There's also a Mac equivalent.

LOL, I struggle with this a lot too. Yep, it's very slow. Even when all the files fit into RAM the sample search it's extremely slow. Sonuscore The Orchestra's multi instruments are a nightmare, for instance.

That's also not completely Kontakt's fault. The more articulations you have available the more loading time.

My prayers and thoughts are with you when resaving Mammoths like Orchestral Tools

 

Kontakt's wave editor is just DUMB asf! wtf is that shitty wave editor! The whole gui cannot be resized!!
What a useless piece of software!!

 

The only think i disliek is the not scaleable scroll GUI

 

It's never been bad. That is only somebody's opinion somewhere.UVI also make a similar engine which is also high quality. Kontakt has become a one goto point for a lot of audio library developers, collectors, composers and orchestrators.

There was a time on here a few years ago, much like with people comparing DAW's - the endless and pointless comments and opinions of what is better, for no result, where some people decided to compare vst's and Kontakt and it went the same path - nowhere.

If a program/app works for you, use it. If it does not work for you, no matter the reputation of the developer, then do not use it.
It is fine not to like something but regardless, Kontakt does the job for an all-in-one accessible centralised repository for multiple audio libraries.

 

Last edited: Apr 13, 2021

I have never used Kontakt in-depth, just played around with very few libraries but I found the UI very awkward and unpleasant among other things that I have difficulty recollecting right now as it's been quite a few years. I currently use Melda SoundFactory as an alternative, Melda DSP's are ridiculously good and I will continue using Melda products as my main go-to's for synths and effects. They have replaced 2/3 of my effects for sure and I find myself wanting to use PowerSynth and SoundFactory for sounddesign, more than my old tools. Truly a masterful bundle of kit.

 

So true. MSoundFactory is just mind-blowing. The effects are good, light and fast and the GUIs only needs some more work, like the infamous file browser.
Other things are complicated just because they offer an incredible array of features.

On the other side, Kontakt went big a lot of years ago and MSoundFactory first launch was like 2 years ago tops.

 

I dislike it.

(Proof by contradiction)

Do I win a prize?

 

Yeah I see what you mean,
Fabfilter ProQ3 does that kind of stuff too..

But I think for this, internal communication might not be really necessary;
It's just a matter of your DAW sending the same "signal" to all tracks with a Kontakt plug,
then they could just purge samples independently of each other..

I wondered about this many times, but I don't see a solution..
Maybe If one could capture the binary/hex signal that is sent when you push the "Purge all samples" button,
and then somehow Inject that command externally into Kontakt, maybe with a script, or a JS plugin/wrapper (Reaper),
or god knows how..

That would be awesome!
and again very useful..

But yeah, in the end it's NI's fault;
it would be super Easy for them to Link a Midi CC channel to trigger the "purge all samples" button,
but for some reason they don't consider this things.


The usual way ppl avoid this problem,
is using Vienna Ensemble Pro to hold/reproduce the samples, and another DAW for composing the stuff.

When the instruments palette is complete, they save the fully purged project,
and that's how it loads the next time.

I haven't had the time yet to rebuild everything on VEPro yet,
but I will probably switch to that method at some point..

Interesting!

-Luckily I don't deal with Orchestral Tools,
but I know their kind.. lol

I tried to love Berlin Strings,
it's still one of the most detailed/deepest sampled libs Ever..

But I didn't like the way they were Mixed/Recorded, specially because they are so Wet,
they've got the natural reverb from that Teldex Hall, but I found it to be excessive,
too reflective, and just too much to fit my actual sound/palette..

I guess if they fit your style, they could be the Best thing ever,
but I work with a different kind of sound, so I had to pass on these..


I always used LASS, which are Dry as a bone, the absolute opposite,
but the timbre/tone is Great, very detailed, so with a good reverb/set up, you can get the job done.
Also they are very light on memory, and that's a real advantage these days..

And that's why I wanted to try this MSS so bad,
the worst case of ante ever..

PS: OK! My bad..
Post edited to take out the MSS slowness topic,
which was due to a faulty HDD..

 

Last edited: Apr 14, 2021

Kontakt is worth it just for Noire

 

And Piano in Blue!

 

It's not disliked, I just know I'll never can afford this sampler and his library, although I have 8 TB of samples for it, I'm ashamed to use them because I am aware that they are not mine

Edit:
Damn now I see that @notsoloud isn't between us anymore

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 13, 2021

I don't. I've also tried to force myself not to download any more Kontakt libraries, period, unless they're totally crucial ...

 

It's nice to see my old name resurrected. I was tooloud then notsoloud and now I am, as you can see the reincarnation of Pope Lenny Belardo.

 

my only problem with kontakt is loading the big libraries /or if your tracks is build with 6 to 9 kontakt tracks/ layers
it sure it will take like 30 mins and maybe more to load everything
(sure i can solve that while making cup of coffee and drink it and finish it while its still loading or even fixing lunch or dinner )
and come back next day with same time waiting for mixing ..thats a pain in ass for sure
that issue alone will let me avoid / minimize my kontakt usage on the next projects

does it need new look /gui ?
definitely
does it need quick fix on faster library scanning/loading ?
absolutely
do i agree with most people liking/disliking kontakt ?
certainly its debatable ,some comments have valid points both side of the story