Starting to fall in love ...

[Bela D Media]

...with Kontakt :D

Most of my work has been done in Giga. Hmm? Me like Kontakt very much.

Out side of the fact that your eye sight must be 20/20 to work long hours with the program - it rocks!

What's your take?

[janila]

Does this mean that your choirs will be available in Kontakt format? ;) That would be nice as my pick is Kontakt. I'm eagerly waiting for the version 2.

[kbaccki]

I agree. I can work for hours without crashes or any wierdness. The "verticalness" of the UI takes a little getting used to, and I'm still not a big fan of that, but overall once you're familiar with the layout things go pretty quickly. Have only seen a couple of relatviley minor glitches with editing, likely having to do with copying zones between patches. I had one patch where I copied zones from patch B into group 1 of patch A, select the new zones and "move to clone group", call it group 2. Problem was whenever I adjusted a MIDI controller value for group 1 it would also change it for group 2. I think I got around it by moving the group 2 zones to yet another clone. Other than that, little glitches such as those are very rare, and the environment provides a lot of programming functionality.

- Keith

[Bela D Media]

Yes! All of DIVA is available in Kontakt - hence so will the Children's Choir and others.

I have tons of NKI files as we speak.

[esperlad]

Keep the Giga versions coming too....I still use them.

[JohnGrant]

I don't want to sound like a wet blanket. But where heavy-duty polyphony is required in my solo piano material, Kontact is almost useless to me. Only Giga seems to work.


JG

[Rich Pell]

Ive been loving working with Kontakt for a couple years now (Since NI put it out in 2002). I find that people who start working with it 1st, dont enjoy GS as much and visa verse. Other than Big pianos i find Kontakt superior for writing quickly and doing creative things that you can`t normally do in Soft-samplers. NI is way ahead of the game this way....Rich

[Rich Pell]

I don't want to sound like a wet blanket. But where heavy-duty polyphony is required in my solo piano material, Kontact is almost useless to me. Only Giga seems to work.


JG
It might be the way Kontakt is reacting to your setup John..I have the PMI Bosey in Kontakt here and i can literally hold down the pedal, bang my forarms all over the keys with no dropouts or cracking. Generally though there are features in GS that make it better for Pianos no doubt.. Hopefully that will change with Kontakt 2. :)

[dcoscina]

I have both Kontakt and GS3. GS 3.01 seems to run much better than 2.5 ever did on my system. I like each interface for different reasons. On Kontakt, I don't have to worry about polyphony ( I only have GS3 Solo). But to my ears, some GS3 libraries sound fuller or more vibrant than Kontakt (SAM Solo Sessions- I have demo patches for both platforms and GS3 sounds richer).

Heck, I'm glad I don't have to decide. I have 'em both and use 'em both!

[Alexcremers]

Giga or Kontakt, doesn't a software sampler just activate (trigger) a sound that is stored on a hard disk? Isn't the soundcard decisive for how a sample sounds?

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

[Bela D Media]

Ot Uh! I may have starting something here ... Picking up the musket now :D

I did notice that Kontakt does not like large piano files. I just assumed it was ProTools acting up again. I have not started on GS3 so, can't tell you much there. I'm like the last Dev to get their copy. Err.

NI sent via overnight ;)

ps. 60+ hours in Kontakt this past week and not one crash or interruption.

[Bela D Media]

Keep the Giga versions coming too....I still use them.Q: What formats are supported?
A: GS3/GigaStudio. Kontakt. HALion. Mach5.

[Chadwick]

Alex,

I don't think the guys are referring to the timbre of the samplers so much as they are to the effieciency of the sample playback engine and how it affects their playing experience.

Different samplers need different size buffers/latency to get the same polyphony. Different samplers have different ways of dealing with polyphony ceilings and note stealing etc.,

[Rich Pell]

I have both Kontakt and GS3. GS 3.01 seems to run much better than 2.5 ever did on my system. I like each interface for different reasons. On Kontakt, I don't have to worry about polyphony ( I only have GS3 Solo). But to my ears, some GS3 libraries sound fuller or more vibrant than Kontakt (SAM Solo Sessions- I have demo patches for both platforms and GS3 sounds richer).

Heck, I'm glad I don't have to decide. I have 'em both and use 'em both!
There is no sound quality diff. bettween the the 2 samplers..it what you have them running through that makes the diff. and how the developer programs the Lib. for each format. Also how they translate can make a sonic diff. Alex C. is right ,there just triggering the sample. I have both as well and i can assure you that sound quality is identical. Except Kontakt can play 24-bit samples and GS 2.5 only 16-bit.

[esteso]

It might be the way Kontakt is reacting to your setup John..I have the PMI Bosey in Kontakt here and i can literally hold down the pedal, bang my forarms all over the keys with no dropouts or cracking. Generally though there are features in GS that make it better for Pianos no doubt.. Hopefully that will change with Kontakt 2. :)

Wow, I don't understand how you can do that. With White Grand in Kontakt (24 bit) I come up to about a 128 voice limit that I cannot get past. I'm playing it in Logic with a G4 1.25/2GB and a 7200 ATA drive.

Kontakt w/DFD 96/384

[Ray Lindsley]

It is possible to have a sound difference between samplers if they are programmed to use filtering. I used to load roland samples into my K2000, and they did not sound very good. I found out that the Roland S-700 series of samplers had filtering that the K2000 did not. When Halion first came out they had really poor filters that they replaced in Halion 2.

[Guga Bernardo]

Giga or Kontakt, doesn't a software sampler just activate (trigger) a sound that is stored on a hard disk? Isn't the soundcard decisive for how a sample sounds?

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

In General, you are right. But there are some small differences that can make you believe that one sounds "better" than another. For instance, different drivers may have different gains. So, if you are using GS3 with gsif drivers and then switch to kontakt using ASIO drivers the difference in volume can make one sound a little louder than other, and someone may take it as a "richer" sound. Another example would be converting samples to compare them. Sometimes when you convert samples the velocities are not translated correctly, so you take the difference in the dynamics as a difference of quality in the sampler playback either. But none of this is really important, because the rendering process is pretty much the same for all. No doubt that the soundcard has a much important role in the sound quality than software.

BTW, I am in love with kontakt since it´s first release. Amazing, just amazing. :)

[Guga Bernardo]

It might be the way Kontakt is reacting to your setup John..I have the PMI Bosey in Kontakt here and i can literally hold down the pedal, bang my forarms all over the keys with no dropouts or cracking. Generally though there are features in GS that make it better for Pianos no doubt.. Hopefully that will change with Kontakt 2. :)

Me too, no problems with polyphony either, even with lower DFD settings!

[JohnGrant]

Me too, no problems with polyphony either, even with lower DFD settings!Rich,

3 7200 rpm drives, 2 gigs mem, the one weak link, maybe, is the 1.8 pentium 4. IS that the problem with Kontakt and pmi bos?

JG

[Guga Bernardo]

Rich,

3 7200 rpm drives, 2 gigs mem, the one weak link, maybe, is the 1.8 pentium 4. IS that the problem with Kontakt and pmi bos?

JG
I am trying to figure out what is happening, watch for some points:

1 - Check DFD to see if the "reserved voices" settings is not too low.

2 - Check if your maximum polyphony is not too high! Putting a 908084 value will not improve your playing experience not even a bit, let the true polyphony appear in the final render. A 64 notes value should be fine for playing most pieces, even the most demanding ones.

3 - If you are getting "only" 100 notes of polyphony, remember that each note counts as two, so they are actually 200 notes in GS.

4 - 24 bit samples are CPU compsuming! Record using 16 bit patches and render using 24 bit.

I hope this helps.

[JohnGrant]

I am trying to figure out what is happening, watch for some points:

1 - Check DFD to see if the "reserved voices" settings is not too low.

2 - Check if your maximum polyphony is not too high! Putting a 908084 value will not improve your playing experience not even a bit, let the true polyphony appear in the final render. A 64 notes value should be fine for playing most pieces, even the most demanding ones.

3 - If you are getting "only" 100 notes of polyphony, remember that each note counts as two, so they are actually 200 notes in GS.

4 - 24 bit samples are CPU compsuming! Record using 16 bit patches and render using 24 bit.

I hope this helps.
So upgrading to 3.1 processor wont help much?

JG

[Guga Bernardo]

It will help a lot too, with a 3.1 processor you will get much more polyphony for shure! Processing power is never enough. :)