Getting Disillusioned Fast

[tomhartman]

I was at first really glad to get the PC out of my room and only have the Mac running Pro Tools and Kontakt....the all in one Mac solution appealed to me. So out went the PC and Giga.

Boy, do I wish I had it back.

Virutally none of the Giga libraries survives the import ot Kontakt, and none of the good libraries will even load their smallest patches....\"Cool Vibes,\" Purfect Drums, Steinway B, all are useless without disk streaming , a fix for which has been promised for weeks on end as an update but is still nowhere to be found for the Mac.

Making matters worse, Chicken Systems Translator has been promising Giga to Kontakt translations for the Mac for months now, and they are as silent as a mummy. This must be the famous rock and a hard place.

I\'m going to start looking for another real fast PC, and get back to Giga, where everything just plain works (it did for me, anyway). Kontakt, and the others, just seem to have too far to go to be used seriously right now, at least on the Mac....

If I\'m wrong, please enlighten me...;_

[Rich Pell]

tom,, Its true that the Giga import in kontakt can suck a bit.The DFD does work though its imperfect right now.Samples usually load in fine just the program patchs are usualy missing stuff(keyswitching.incorrect vel.levels etc. etc.)Dont hold yor breath,stick with GS for that stuff but any other sample formats really rock in Kontakt.The flexablilty and creative stuff that u can do in it are really its strengths and now there a ton of librarys coming out in kontakt so dont give up.I think programers and sample developers are just scratching the surface of what this thing can do.The update will be out this month...try to dig it..Rich PEll

[Rich Pell]

Ohh yea..CDXtract 4.1.2 seems to do an O.K job of doing GiGa to Kontakt.u can download the demo and try..hope this helps..Rich

[Chris Villepigue]

I hear you man...I\'m going back to buying hardware because the music software industry has burned me too many times.
Have you tried cdxtract4? I\'ve been waiting for the translator version for quite a while myself and I\'m about to give up on Translator and get xtract.
As for Native Instruments...I wouldn\'t trust purchasing anything else from them.

[Chris Villepigue]

I hear you man...I\'m going back to buying hardware because the music software industry has burned me too many times.
Have you tried cdxtract4? I\'ve been waiting for the translator version for quite a while myself and I\'m about to give up on Translator and get xtract.
As for Native Instruments...I wouldn\'t trust purchasing anything else from them.

[x$$$]

Tom, you should ask Scarbee about Halion2... he\'s been raving about it lately. images/icons/wink.gif

Honestly, the new version is much, much improved - and as a Mac user, I\'ve had no problems with it or v.1.13. (I\'ve never even gotten the \"missing sample\" bug that you\'ll hear about from some Mac users.)

I\'m also a satified user of CDXtract 4.1.2. Worth checking it out...

x$ (ex-bucks)

[tomhartman]

Originally posted by x$:
Tom, you should ask Scarbee about Halion2... he\'s been raving about it lately. images/icons/wink.gif

Honestly, the new version is much, much improved - and as a Mac user, I\'ve had no problems with it or v.1.13. (I\'ve never even gotten the \"missing sample\" bug that you\'ll hear about from some Mac users.)

I\'m also a satified user of CDXtract 4.1.2. Worth checking it out...

x$ (ex-bucks) <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">OK....I got the demo of Extract and it\'s very good. This is a great relief.

Still, without streaming, I won\'t be playing any large samples. But thanks to all for the heads up on Extract. We don\'t need no stinking Translator;)

Unfortunately, Halion only works with Cubase I guess...I\'m a Pro Tools user so that\'s not an option...

[Rich Pell]

Maybe its a Mac + Protools thing but the DFD in Kontakt does indeed work though not perfectly obviously.I`m running SX on a fast tweeked Pc and Ive had no problems loading in and playing large samples(Scarbee 73, Mamlsjo etc..)Try playing around with yur buffer settings maybe...Hope this helps Rich

[Rich Pell]

Sorry to hear that Tom ,must be frustrating.So far mothing Ive heard plays Giga samples like GS(and probably never will).But what I`m finding is theres so much other great stuff in other formats that work great with Kontakt.Just look what King and others are doing to QL brass.I think Garritan just ported his stuff to kontakt and Akai samples work great in it..so keep de music flowin man...Rich images/icons/tongue.gif

[Veron]

I`m waiting for the 1.2.1 update too....
I`m really getting frustrated . And there`s
no sound of the person at NI .....
Where did he go.... I really want this update because
thie update is the last , that supports MAS .

BTW , I`m a Mac user.

[tomhartman]

Originally posted by Rich Pell:
Maybe its a Mac + Protools thing but the DFD in Kontakt does indeed work though not perfectly obviously.I`m running SX on a fast tweeked Pc and Ive had no problems loading in and playing large samples(Scarbee 73, Mamlsjo etc..)Try playing around with yur buffer settings maybe...Hope this helps Rich <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">It\'s a Mac thing. They are \"working on it.\"

DFD is a sure way to play nothing on the Mac but pops, clicks, freezes, etc.

images/icons/wink.gif

[Alexcremers]

I`m really getting frustrated . And there`s
no sound of the person at NI .....
Where did he go.... <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">That\'s strange. First Tascam and now Native Instruments. Who\'s silencing them? Where did they all go? Perhaps nobody left. How is the situation at Steinberg. There in danger too, you know, they have Halion. Someone should checked it out. But who? What the hell is going on here,MacGyver ?


------------
Alex Cremers

[Rich Pell]

I think they feel theres no point giving out estimated arrivals since every promise update release date keeps geting posponed anyways.Its obviously more difficult than it seems to work the bugs out of this sofisticated sampler.And i think they have to beta test and then go back in and re-tweek.This is the way.When u think about it, its a fairly new product.A 32 bit VST soft sampler with granular synthesis.WHo else is doing this?Not even Hallion 2 from what ive seen has the synth part down.As for me,I`m put my head down and writing till the update which should be just like a bonus! images/icons/tongue.gif MacIver LIves ..Rich

[peter269]

I\'m a little surprised at these comments. Not to be offensive, Tom, but why in the world would you ditch your Giga setup for Kontakt on the Mac assuming it would flawlessly import Giga?!

Kontakt\'s promise ISN\'T importation, it\'s all the new libraries coming out in Kontakt format. Both GOS and SISS are slated for a Kontakt version with a crossgrade path. Dan Dean has also announced that his whole library will be out in Kontakt format, too. Then of course, is the momentary release of the EW/QLSO which I\'ve heard some live demos of, and is really excellent. That\'s in a Kontakt format (a lighter version called Kompakt), then Doug Rogers has an entire slate of Kontakt releases coming throughout the summer.

I\'m sorry to say this, but it appears that you made a poor decision that you\'re now blaming NI for.

[Martin Jann]

Hi everybody,

I am sorry for my absense. I know it is my job to moderate this forum and to give you answers. Please excuse.

Just to inform you about the development of Kontakt. We have an internal version of Kontakt which solves many problems with the Giga import as well as with DFD. It still needs to be tested very thouroughly so we don´t give you anything that does not work properly. I really hope that we can upload the Kontakt 1.2.1 update this week. Unfortunately I cannot really influence this, but I hope that this is good news for you. You don´t have to wait much longer.

Best regards,

Martin

[Chris Caouette]

Thanks for the update Martin. I am looking forward to the update and then the OSX version. Hopefully DP4 is AU ready by then.
Chris

[Rich Pell]

Thanks Martin...Is this posted on the NI forum site as well?..thers some folks there that would love to know this..Rich

[Bill]

Not to be too cynical, but that\'s pretty much what was said a month ago...

[BluesWest]

Not to be too cynical, but that\'s pretty much what was said a month ago... <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Good point, especially since there is no mention of this claimed imminent update on either NI\'s main Web site nor their own Kontakt user forum.

[RDB]

For what it\'s worth, I just received an email from NI support. It states that Kontakt 1.2.1 would be soon out soon and that it\'s currently working great. I\'m a Sonar/Project5 user and so DXI support so far has been terrible. I haven\'t even bought Kontakt yet because of this. I heard 1.1 is more stable than 1.2 as a DXI and I\'ve only been able to use the Kontakt demo, which is 1.1, so I can imagine the frustration some of you have. It didn\'t leave a good impression on quality assurance, but Kontakt itself seemed promising enough to make me really want it and hope that fixes will come. It was the sudden announcement of official Kontakt support of great sample libraries that sold me.

I\'ve made a decision though, which is that I\'ll never buy any software again unless it is satisfactory in its current state. It always leaves a sour taste in the mouth to be waiting for serious updates for software whether it be drivers for an audio card or a patch for a software instrument.

Btw, does anyone know specifically which parameters CDXtract includes in the Giga conversion to Kontakt? Does it include Reverb settings, etc...?

[KevinK]

Originally posted by RDB:
For what it\'s worth, I just received an email from NI support. It states that Kontakt 1.2.1 would be soon out soon and that it\'s currently working great. I\'m a Sonar/Project5 user and so DXI support so far has been terrible. I haven\'t even bought Kontakt yet because of this. I heard 1.1 is more stable than 1.2 as a DXI and I\'ve only been able to use the Kontakt demo, which is 1.1, so I can imagine the frustration some of you have. It didn\'t leave a good impression on quality assurance, but Kontakt itself seemed promising enough to make me really want it and hope that fixes will come.<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">FYI, I\'m running Sonar 2.2 and Kontakt 1.2,
and I haven\'t had any problems *OTHER THAN*
the well-known bug with DFD when one \"bounces\"
a track to audio. I\'ve got a fair amount of
memory, and no samples bigger than a couple
of hundred megs, so this isn\'t fatal for me.
There have been reports of people having
problems with the DXi inteface to Kontakt
being either flaky or excessively CPU-hungry,
so at first I used the Cakewalk VSTi->DXi
wrapper with it, but I\'ve also tried working
with it as a straight DXi, and haven\'t had
any problems so far.

NI have some good ideas and some good products,
and I have no regrets about buying both Kontakt
and Reaktor 4 for use in my Sonar environment,
but NI do seem to have gotten out ahead of
themselves in promising too many things to
too many people this year.

[tomhartman]

Guess that update isn\'t gonna make it up this week;)

[Bill]

See what I mean...

[Veron]

Originally posted by Bill:
See what I mean... <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Dejavu . Did someone make a change
in the Matrix world ? images/icons/smile.gif

ok seriously , the same thing happened with the
DFD update ( 1.2 ) too .
And I`m really getting tired of this .
I shouldn`t have trusted NI .

IMO , I thought that NI has released
too much products , and they aren`t
able to take care all of it .
They should hire more programer`s .

[Veron]

Originally posted by chocothrax:
Maybe NI should hire all the people who are complaining about the update in order to get it done faster. I know I need a summer job. Ok so I don\'t have any education on soft samplers or on computers either, but niether does anyone at NI so there should be no prob eheheh. images/icons/cool.gif <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">I completely agree with you .

Maybe its not
\" how many \" programer`s there are ,
maybe its ,
\" the qualitiy \" of the programer`s .

I`ve been really trying to be patient ,
and keep my thoughts to myself .
But I can`t no more .

[tomhartman]

I will keep Kontakt around, because it does some cool things. But for getting work done, I\'m going back to Giga.

LONG LIVE THE GIGAMASTER. The streaming kings;)

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Hi Guys,

You have to remember that all of this software is bleeding edge stuff.

From a business perspective, if you want dependability and flexibility, you\'d better buy every software synth/sampler that fits your OS/platform, and use them all for their strongest points.

Kontakt has routing/DSP/design features which set it apart. It\'s not the best streamer around.

GigaStudio has no peer in streaming and realtime performance, but doesn\'t have nearly the \"modular\" style routing capability as Kontakt.

I find that using both platforms gives me a lot of options and workarounds.

Consider that you can own every software program on the market for less than you\'d have paid for an 8-track RTR a decade ago. Count your blessings that so much amazing technology is in the reach of every person, professional or hobbyist. Consider that making a dual-platform sampler which accommodates thousands upon thousands of hardware and software variables is a miracle unto itself.

The people at Native Instruments are fabulous, creative, and talented. It would be great if deadlines never slipped. But what do you want? A half-fix?

It is very easy to underestimate the effort required to write and test this kind of software unless you\'ve been involved behind the scenes. I have the deepest respect for these people. They do a job which would reduce me to a blubbering idiot.

Oh wait, I\'m already a blubbering idiot. Never mind.

[Rich Pell]

Hear, Hear!! ...Fixing the Kontakt can`t be easy,she`s a complicated beast. Rich