Kontakt is not the sampler I'd reach for for simple sampling of my own sounds. And no, I don't know what I would reach for, but something way simpler. (Me, I'd probably use a virtual keyboard sampler like an Emulator II but that's just me; a simple software sampler of some kind probably makes more sense. There's many out there.)

 

I always wonder why kontakt became the de-facto sampler. Theres like nothing else than the sampler and its gui thats mediocre. At the time though its competitioners made not much sense either and maybe native instruments had a good idea with the kontakt libraries.

When i think about spectrasonics products, they are samplers (or romplers) too. I would never reach for synths in kontakt but thats not the case for omnisphere.

I assosiate kontakt with huge orchestral libraries

 

It (Kontakt) had features GIGAstudio didn't have, and NI attracted more developers. It was a bit of a VHS vs. BetaMax situation...

 

It's worth trying to remember that samplers were originally developed for exactly this purpose. They were made to produce more "realistic" playable sounds than "synthesizers" did at the time. Using samplers to capture snippets of other peoples recordings was pretty "controversial" at the time. Look at all the original Kurzweil, Emu, etc. original libraries for those hardware samplers. There are no "marimbas from space". They are playable "real" instruments.

The idea of using a sampler to capture audio is now obsolete. If you want to play Jog Wheel to set start/end points you are free to waste your time. Now everything can be done with our nice modern computers and audio interfaces, and then transferred to a hardware sampler if you want. We can microscope in for our edits and cut everything at perfect zero crossings. This has relegated "samplers" to audio playback and sound manipulation. Even field recordings and foley are not made with samplers. Or you want your workflow to be entirely ouside-the-box/DAWless.

 

Last edited: Nov 30, 2023

Yes thats right of course but what i kind of meant was that i have reduced my association of kontakt to mostly orchestral libraries when it could have been much more. I think uvi falcon is more like something kontakt could have become or could have been but the devs did not want that. I do wonder why kontakt was the one that made it big in the first place (falcon did not obviously exist), propably the simplicity and libraries that just work

I feel like if id want to go for analog sampled synth sounds id rather go for omnisphere ,falcon or whatever. Kontakt propably has great libraries for synths too but it just feels like its at its best when you load some 200 gigabyte orchestral library that you dare not or even want to tweak. I havent been around so im maybe wrong but in a 10 year timeline kontakt seems to have gone nowhere (ok it has a better gui now). The libraries have

Theres really nothing bad to say about kontakt but i have hard time finding anything good to say either when i think about the possibilities. Its just a frame for libraries. The libraries are starting to be so monumental that i would personally rather see them as individual vsts. I know it would be troublesome for the developers and everyone but i just dont like the kontakt frame, loading it and finding the libraries. If i would spend 500€ on some hans zimmer library i wouldnt want to search around for it on some laggy ass native instruments plugin

 

Based on your own tracks no doubt you cannot possibly be wrong. Based on the principles of what people who regularly work with REAL instruments and real musicians, yes.
Downloaded sound sources only have a true measure of reality if they have not been touched since recording. That is, no compression, no EQ, nada. Those are very rare in any sample library. For the greater part, many are already processed. Sure, sample libraries have come a long way but a live ensemble sounds nothing like a sampled ensemble. It cannot. The human factor of spontaneity in any given situation which can and will change from performance to performance will never be captured as anything other than an emulation. Swam is like many other modellers. Good for what it is and nothing more.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2023

I love Falcon. To me, it addresses almost every complaint I could have with Kontakt. Synths, good effects, some file size reduction through lossless audio, low resources usage. My Falcon to Kontakt usage is probably 10 to 1, or more. They have added lots of new expansions; but with Kontakt there are hundreds, if not thousands more. I like them both; but where Kontakt is actually "not worth it" to me, is these enormous libraries that people "minify" them. They are too much of a storage commitment, not to mention expensive. The first post is not about money, though. I have almost no synth source Kontakt instruments, and the ones I do have are of old hardware Romplers, like the Emu synth modules. for example Mo'Phatt. If there were good emulators, I would maybe use those instead. That is just a resources issue. I don't mind Kontakt, but I wouldn't spend lots of money on it, like many legit users do. It's just another option, and so I would not suggest to someone to just skip checking it out because most people do figure out how to work it into their workflow. Without it being every sound in their tracks.

 

I think one could definatly skip kontakt if he doesnt need the orchestral stuff. But the libraries cover everyy genre and it works allright so there is no reason to skip it or not to get to know it. Its the maybe single most important/used plugin there is

I was somewhat planning on dedicating second computer for kontakt but i got the latest version to run on windows 7 thanks to work of good people. This even though i dont even use it that often , it tells a lot of how important vst it is.

 

Kontakt became the standard because it offers sample library / instrument developers the entire range of standard effects and many more exotic effects too. I probably have fewer effect plugins installed than Kontakt provides by itself.

Recording a bunch of samples in your basement and releasing those as a soundfont is one thing. But writing your own reverb, chorus, compressor, EQ, saturation, cabinet sim, ... to create a quality virtual instrument is a huge multi-year undertaking for several people.

And you'd still need to create a sample player with a scripting language for round robins, CC support, legato, arp engine, ... too.

Kontakt is like a scriptable DAW inside your DAW, complete with mix busses etc.

 

Well, if you want to get started with sampling, and not using libraries, then Kontakt is one of those "do everything" samplers. It's powerful, but it's complex. Also, Native Instruments being Native Instruments dropped most of import options from K6 onwards, so if you want to import your Soundfonts and such, then you need Kontakt 5 as well.

Depending what you want to do with your samples, you might consider something else first, the built-ins in
Ableton are handy, TW16wx is free, and simpler to get started with. Also if you want to do something specific, like splicing loops or making drum kits, there are easier options.

 

It's the only plugin I refuse to buy for a decade now. I don't support the policy to the developers by NI.
It started when I bought a library from 8Dio for 499 Euros 10 years ago and it was not for the free player. And NI wanted me to spend another 500 Euros for the complete version. You may argue it's the fault by 8Dio, but it's the NI policy who make developers pay a lot to get it on the free version. In the past 10 years I heard a lot of problems by the developers complaining about the NI policy.

I think this is (only) ONE reason developers like Spitfire, OT and 8Dio do their own plugins now to avoid NI.

 

Good reply too

Ironically enough that made me laugh hard
What can I say... perhaps I was having a bad day?

 

Kontakt is really great when you have the right libraries that fit your needs, i started using Falcon recently and I'm addicted to it, it feels to me it's made for electronic music producers because each patch is in the chromatic scale so it's easy to sample things while Kontakt is directed for orchestral or cinematic music composers.

 

Yes! “The frame for libraries” as RajuPalliBabu mentioned - I think about Kontakt like this as well. Huge top quality libraries produced by dozens of third party developers imported to Kontakt and… ? They could be imported to any other sampler or synth or sold on its own as sample libraries, right?

What, then, does Kontakt do/add to those libraries? Does it add an audio engine, fx, processing, or gui? Or just the possibility for developers to sell their products under NI hood? So it makes a very good advertisement.
And I don’t need it for importing my own audio files to create my own instrument. This can be easily done in Ableton with stock plugins.

 

No, they cannot. Have you ever used a "primitive" old sampler? Hardware, or even something like Logic's EXS24? Are you familiar with Autosampling, like in Logic or like SampleRobot? You can setup all the options for round-robin sampling, different velocity layers, and other options. Then you record the samples. You will have a big new folder full of waveform content. Let's say this pool of waveforms is created by you, and you have 2000 samples. Are you going to drag all of them into a basic software sampler, setup velocity layers to use different root samples that are recorded with different velocity, put a single root note sample on every key, and do it manually?

The sampling is done that way because of Kontakt. No-one is going to build an EXS24 or whatever instrument like that. They maybe use maybe 1 sample every 3 keys, and further away from root note samples things get stretched. Or they just use Midi velocity to make the sample louder or quieter, where a real instrument may react differently when played/struck at different velocity levels.

Then you throw an interface, some scripting, with all that sampling work under the hood, in a very playable form. Nobody makes sampler instruments like that by themselves. It is the same level and amount of recording work as the sampling behind Drummer plugins like SD3, AD3, EzDrummer, etc. UVI Falcon libs, Nexus expansions, and others are more work than most people are going to do. Kontakt gives a "protected" platform for both Mac/Windows to someone who wants to make an instrument like that. There can't actually be anyone who still thinks Kontakt libraries are safe from ripping and sharing.

 

Last edited: Dec 1, 2023

I think a lot of it has to do with the ease of the scripting language and the ability to make custom GUIs for the samples.

https://adammonroemusic.com/

Someone like Adam Monroe, who's also a musician, can sample his own instruments for his use, then easily sell them to other people to use for extra money and they're pretty high quality samples.

I typically convert the libraries to wav format, then SFZ or SF2 for my own personal use. My one issues is that, with the classical libraries, sometimes there are WAY more round robin/etc layers than necessary and it slows things down by having to load them all. Some of them have like 8 round robins, which is just way more than I need.

You could always try e-mailing someone like Adam Monroe and just asking him about using Kontakt, i.e. the pros and cons, since he'd know.