Ok, then obviously I'm outta here. I'm trying to REALLY master the art of low end management(which is mostly just dealing with the kick drum and the bass) in mixing and got no time for foolishness. I've made some incredible mixes and ALSO some that aren't popping quite right so I need to sort that out to obtain consistency. I was just curious because of the "click baity" sound of the post. I admit it: dude got me...

 

It's sounds like it sounds. Who cares?



It sounds like it sounds.

 

Honestly? It's just nice to hear that the anomaly wasn't cause by Brexit for a change!

 

Don't get your hopes too high. If it isn't the brexit it's Trump.
lol

 

Hahaha That's very true!

 

Hello Everyone
A funny post in general especially some of the replies
I wanted to chip in my experience of using a "not quite legit" Kontakt and libraries for the past year on my PC running WIN8 pro.
Importing .wav samples into a DAW, comparing them and finding them superior to Kontakt playback is quite possible but I dont think the fact of being a cracked or legit version makes the difference.
In my experience of cracked Software which goes back to early 90's it can be bad but it can also be good - sometimes crackers improve on the original software. My version of Kontakt 5.7.3 seems to run fine, I dont imagine it has been programmed to run any lesser or better than the next version.
However I found that Kontakt can sound bad at any time, especially when you add new libraries and even more so when the libraries are heavy orchestral strings. They can break up and sound distorted or noisy at any time.
My Kontakt string libraries sounded really bad, even though other VSTs and Audio samples sounded ok
At first I thought it could be my version but looking around the internet many people had similar issues - noisy crackly strings, mostly from Kontakt or other big String plugins like Vienna.
Many people said "that's just normal, its the background noise of the strings" but that is nonsense. I can hear the noise they mean - that's real and is there but when your system is not running well the quality of the String sample playback goes down and it sounds like much more of the noise they are talking about and less of the actual string sound you want, therefore sounds like crap
Now going back to the original post which made you all laugh, at this point if I was able to steal a .wav from the String library folders and import them into my DAW they would have undoubtedly sounded great, emphasising what he said but these libraries are all encoded so it is not possible.
General consensus is that when digital stuff degrades it just pops or cuts out but I was experiencing just a kind of broken sound
It took me a long time to work out what was going on - I discovered it was mainly my crappy soundcard
I upgraded to RME AIO and it made a huge improvement but then as I started building up bigger tracks the sound also started to degrade.
Kontakt is very resource hungry, especially with the larger string libraries so it's easy to run into trouble with a modest system
(I know that's why they have freezing, bouncing etc. ) I expect is not uncommon for many people and I assume they make Kontakt to work this way, so it doesn't pop and cut out all the time just lowers the quality maybe ??? (that's another topic for another day)
My conclusion is that it comes down to everyone's individual system - if you want a good sounding Kontakt + Instrument libraries you need to buy/build a decent rig for it to run on and a decent Audio Interface is essential !
I LOVE my kontakt, when its running ok, its amazing and essential for my music and when I am rich and famous I will buy it + all the libraries -
I just built a new PC with much higher spec than previous and right now my DAW and Kontakt sound like crap.
I tweeked quite bit already but need to do more, it will be ok in the end.
Quick question - Playing Kontakt as standalone I just experimented changing from ASIO (which everyone seems to recommend) to WASAPI and the noise/distortion I had on Strings totally disappeared - anyone know why ???
My ASIO drivers are up to date

Cheers everyone
PS. As good as it is, my favourite sound is not in Kontakt, it's the Full Strings in Miroslav 1.0

 

Last edited: Mar 4, 2018

Was LSD, cocaine or meth involved in this test? .....Are there cops in front of the house????

 

just prove it with sound examples

 

Surely you mean crack, not coke.

 

At least there was something funny this sunday.

 

Truly twilight zone
But I know from where this come from... from VI-C thread about new SF library HZS ...

 

Last edited: Mar 4, 2018

Hi everyone. First post, hopefully it helps some people.

We all know the cracked vs legit Kontakt debate is stupid. They sound the same. People complaining about the sound quality of Kontakt libraries in general, however, may have a legit claim. I've found that almost every library I come across runs tons of unnecessary processing that degrades sound quality. Many things by SonicCouture, for instance, run everything through a HPF set around 30hz, a LPF set around 20kHz, turn the volume down a few dB, more useless filters, another volume change, a limiter, more filters, stereo width manglers, effects that aren't actually bypassed, etc. It can take a while, but going through your libraries and cleaning out all this junk can help tremendously. I'm extra paranoid of unnecessary processing so I'll even turn off tracking and pitch bend when I don't need it. Spitfire stuff is a bit trickier since removing effects completely screws up the scripting and UI when you reload an instrument, not to mention their whole tone sampling. Just make sure everything is properly bypassed.

If this is common knowledge and I just haven't been lurking long enough, I apologize.

EDIT: spelling corrections

 

lmao Massive STILL does that? Aren't they ever going to fix it?

I remember when I was the noobest of noobs, before found AS, probably before I even knew what the R2R on the cracked torrents meant, I downloaded cracked Massive and like a million preset libraries, then I made a thread on Gearslutz asking why Massive takes an eternity to start.

Everyone was like... uh do you have a bunch of presets installed?

And of course I told them, no I definitely didn't download this illegally and install every preset under the sun. Of course not. So that couldn't be it.

Then I recorded my speaker output of a Youtube guy who was making a growl bass and did a null test and it didn't cancel out my Massive AT ALL. It's true guys, the cracked versions sound different

 

OMG you made my day

 

First thing I do is disabling reverbs and put a simple Valhalla plugin or a good IR one.

 

the reason for the different Kontaktsounds cracked n legit is called the MANDELA EFFECT!
We AUDIOSEX*ers are in a different world. BLAME CERN!

 

and which sounds better. , the legit or the cracked one ? oh my god, the best one of the year ! will be hard to beat this one

 

Keep in mind that I'm not saying this is this case most of the time and I won't comment about this particular situation, but:

The concept is not ludicrous at all. In fact, this has been known to actually happen, and makes sense as a form of copy protection. A developer could certainly put in multiple levels of copy protection, some being obvious to defeat and others being subtle -- the idea is that someone would crack the obvious part and assume they defeated the protection, not realizing there was a secondary or tertiary hidden mechanism -- much like the time-bomb concept.

Case in point, there are cracked versions of older burning software which would intentionally corrupt burned CDs yet would still pass the validation stage. There was no way a user of the cracked software would know that their data wasn't fully intact unless they went through the trouble to use an outside source of validation. But how many casual pirates thought to do so? The developer got the last laugh on that one.