Kontakt and Garritan - the future of sampling...

[J. Whaley]

Hello all. Around this chat board the talk between Giga and Kontakt has created some pretty nasty debates. Well I\'ve been trying to decide what I really will dig into as well. I\'ve already got Giga so it\'s not like I\'m going to toss my liscense, but i think it\'s becoming clear, Kontakt is creating some very nice and distinct advantages. Besides the obvious ones like someone will acknowledge NI is still in business - vs. Tascam who pretends they\'re doing something with Giga - NI has developed the very practical Kompakt player which allows developers like Gary to develop such products as the GPO. It\'s cross platform, you don\'t have to buy a sampler, and it works! Clearly developers are loving this. Just look at who all is jumping on board. East West, Garritan, through East west Michel Post now has his piano in the same format. And I know more will come. Plus, the cool thing is if you DO have kontakt, you can pull the same sounds into that and use the full blown version if you desire.

With that said I predict Kontakt will over take Giga in market share over the next 9-12 months. Unless something so incredbily ground breaking is in GS3 - so amazing that customer service doesn\'t matter, I don\'t think Giga will survive. That\'s not to say I will never use it, but I just don\'t think it will fly.

With that said, apparently there\'s some additional programming things in Kontakt that are amazing. Word has it Tom Hopkins is flying high with joy working with it. I don\'t understand all the features, but I\'m just thinking some of the things with Giga that bug all of us, which I personally blame on archetetcutre, will not be a problem with kontakt. In fact kontakt I believe will re-write some of the rules for sampling. Just look what NI has done with software synthesis! I forsee a future where GOS updates are not just merely some more patches, and variations, but literally new instruments in kontakt using the same sample material. I forsee GOS taking creating new standards within the string library world with the samples they\'ve ALREADY made! nothing new. And these new standards I believe will only be able to be developed for Kontakt. I\'m not sure what it is, but it has to do with archetecture.

SO, with all that said - Gary - What\'s the upgrade path from GOS giga to GOS Kontakt? There\'s been a lot of talk about one library being better blah blah blah, I think it ultimately is going to come down to programming and sampler - and I think Tom Hopkins is THE man!

[Garritan]

I have to agree that Tom definitely is the man! Has he been \"flying high with joy\" again??!! images/icons/wink.gif

There\'s much talk about which sample library is better than the other, or which sampler is better. Today there are many great colors and brushes in the musician\'s palette. A flared brush is not necessarily better than a wide one. Yellow paint is not necessarily better than red. You use the tools and the colors that are needed for a particular job.

Both Kontakt and Giga have their own unique set of strengths and advantages. Giga is still a good product and we have had some projects in development for some time. We are not abandoning the platform at this time and are eager to see what 3.0 has to offer.

I have not decided on pricing for the upgrade path to Kontakt GOS yet. Much depends on what will be included. We may include some solo strings and/or a harp with GOS II. Would you be in favor of such an addition?

Gary Garritan

[Rilla]

That pretty well sums up my view!

[Rilla]

Yes to solo strings!

[J. Whaley]

Yes, I\'d love some Solo strings, and I\'m looking for a harp images/icons/smile.gif So, sure! I\'m up for whatever!

[Scott Cairns]

I have not decided on pricing for the upgrade path to Kontakt GOS yet. Much depends on what will be included. We may include some solo strings and/or a harp with GOS II. Would you be in favor of such an addition?
<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Hi Gary, I would be mainly happy to see the GOS lib in all it\'s 24 bit glory, in Kontakt format.

Also if possible, with an inbuilt legato tool and the round robin feature automatically performing the alternate up/down bow strokes. images/icons/smile.gif

[Jiradej Setabundhu]

Hello folks, new member here. Just want to introduce myself and add one more vote to J. Whaley comment. I just ordered Kontakt a few days ago and soon will step in the wonderful world of sampling for the first time!

As a composer who use Mac and know nothing about PC, I\'ve avoided using sample libraies because of the Giga format. All the great libraries and not even one Mac sampler that can translate it perfectly without problem! PC is not an option for me because I won\'t be able to fix a thing if (when, actually) anything goes wrong.

So something like GOP, with its own player, is perfect for me. I know it will work 100% out of the box (I hope!), the best thing is no conversion. If I won a lottery, I\'d certainly get QLSO for this same reason. images/icons/smile.gif

Cheers,

[esperlad]

I have used Giga for some time, and I like many of the features...but, I have ordered Kontakt today. The offer was too good to pass up so I decided to buy the thing. I hope it works for me like Giga has. I too, am looking forward to version 3.0.
I would like to know what GOS II will contain. I am always up for more solo strings. If the harp is a symphonic pedal harp, that would be good too.

[Malo]

Hi, Gary!


We may include some solo strings and/or a harp with GOS II. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">As a Mac/Logic user I am also very interested in crossing over from GOS Giga to GOS Kontakt. You have mentioned GOS II in some threads. What exactly is GOS II? Is this the 24bit version of GOS, or is this a whole new set of string samples? In either case I am thrilled! Solo strings and Harp? Great!!!

Looking forward to GPO!

[Jake Johnson]

I wish I could share the enthusiasm over Kontakt. I like the sounds it makes available, but:

1. I find the interface very badly done. The colors and font sizes make reading difficult.

2. The way effects and envelopes are buried make them hard to find. And when you do activate one, it moves other effects and envelopes out of view, so there\'s far too much scrolling required when you want to edit. VSampler has a far better interface, using largish tabs to move between envelopes and effects. (On the other hand, I know, VSampler has fewer filters.)

3. Kontakt\'s handling of grouping and envelopes seems convoluted, to me: to assign different envelopes to different samples (if you want a longer decay in the bass of a piano than the midrange, for example), you have to assign the different samples to new groups and then create a new envelope for each group. And this doesn\'t always seem to work. Much cleaner if you could just select samples and set the envelope for them. And if you have several envelopes, now, you run into the interface problem mentioned above: you have to scroll too much too find them.

4. The envelopes are a little limited. You can\'t assign new envelope points. You can\'t enter settings except by turning those hard to control knobs. Would be nice if you could right-click and enter the setting you need.

5. The looping feature never has worked logically. You can\'t do the very simple thing that you must do to test a loop: play the full note back with the loop, to see how it will sound if you were to press the key.

I hate to complain like this. Kontakt is great once you get the settings you want, but it doesn\'t make editing an instrument easy, and in fact seems to set huge obstacles in the way. Clearly, it\'s sometimes more straightforward than Giga, with the strange separate program, Gigaedit, but even Gigaedit lets us see more at once. (Hm..it uses tabs, too, come to think of it.)

[Frederick]

Originally posted by Garritan:
I have not decided on pricing for the upgrade path to Kontakt GOS yet. Much depends on what will be included. We may include some solo strings and/or a harp with GOS II. Would you be in favor of such an addition?

Gary Garritan <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Um...yeah! That would be great. BTW I like the \"and\" part better than the \"or\" part! images/icons/wink.gif

[Jean-pierre Brie]

Hi mr. Garritan

I just want to add my voices to Scott Cairns intervention specifically the inbuild legato tools.

Thanks!

Jean-pierre Brie
http://loreille.com (\"http://loreille.com\")

[Garritan]

Scott Cairns. Jean-pierre Brie & J Whaley,

We will be able to provide legato mode, mono mode, alternating bow strokes, variability and other Maestro Tools features with the Kontakt version. These features are built into Kontakt and there would be no need for a separate program. There are also other features (like the Time Machine) that may provide some other interesting capabilities.

Gary Garritan

[J. Whaley]

Gary could you please send a towel with your products? I need it to wipe the drewel off my mouth! I SO can\'t wait!

[Rich Pell]

I have to say ,the Time Machine feature in Kontakt is amazing and highly useful.Its saved me so many times..Rich

[J. Whaley]

Gary. I would like to see inclusion of some sort of a tool that would help make some of the articulation things easier to work with. Granted once I got the hang of Maestro tools it\'s not been a big deal. But I do have to load it up each time and if I load the wrong one then it takes time to reload everything. I tried the Logic maestro tools but frankly never got it working like i wanted. I didn\'t have time to mess with it so I went back to the stand alone version.

J-

[WayneSim]

Pesonally I am very disapointed with the newer libaries not supporting Giga. I understand everyone\'s viewpoints and as people have stated they like Kontakt better and so on. But what about the people who only use Giga? Most of you will say \"upgrade\" to kontakt. But what if I don\'t like Kontakt. I have been messing around with a copy from a friend for the last few days. And I can\'t use the program at all. It seems to hard to use. From what i gather you can only have 16 tracks?

GPO is the only reason i am looking twice at Kontakt. If it was up to me I\'d only ever use Giga. It works great for me and everything is rock solid. I am so depressed to think that if I can\'t somehow get used to Kontakt I can never use GPO. Will GPO EVER be able to be used in Giga? And if not, what is everyone like myself going to do? I love using Giga. I just hope that Giga 3.0 comes out REAL soon as blows everyone away. But from the talk in these forums i doubt it images/icons/frown.gif .

I really don\'t know what to do. I need some new libaries very soon. I dont like Kontakt. I am in LOVE with GPO. And I\'m friggin confused. What is going on? images/icons/mad.gif .

[Z6]

Wayne, you don\'t need Kontakt to run GPO. It comes with it\'s own little unique version of Kontakt.

Also, it\'s not 16 tracks in reality; if you run it as DXi or VSTi you end up with almost unlimited resources (depending on your system). Either way - you don\'t have to buy Kontakt just for GPO.