Bad Trend IMHO

[Ashermusic]

To Gary Garritan and other sample developers:

While I think there are some great new libraries coming out I personally am very leary of buying any expensive ones that are tied to one sample playback device like Kompakt. As new OSX and Windows XP versions come out there is simply no guarantee that a company like N.I. will survive financially through them and therefore be able to continue to update them. Also, frankly, N.I. products have earned a well deserved reputation of not always playing nice with the other children, so to speak.

When I buy samples I want to know that if I need to change my sampler I will still be able to use my expensive sample libraries by conversion to GIga, EXS24, Halion, Mach 5, Kontakt 2, whatever. The audio software world is very fluid and I think this trend is bad.

Just my opinion.

[rageangel]

have you tried V Sampler?

[Link F.]

I agree for the most part. But I've also been reading the Garritan forum for a while and doubt Gary would leave any of us "out in the cold" should NI ever go belly up. I believe he would unlock the samples and allow them to be used in Kontakt (which they already can be as long as you have GPO installed and registered).

Also, just because they are tied to a sample engine you still have all the samples as audio data and all the programming is there. If NI or any other sample engine company were to go broke, there would be a translation program that should unlock these. (and there are always cracks if worse comes to worse, you could crack the player and take the samples to the updated engine of your choice).

I wouldn't worry about it; neither does it make a difference in my purchasing decisions. I have never had any problems with the different players and will be pre-ordering Project SAM's True Strike VI next week so I will see how the HALion player works, but I'm not expecting any problems.

[robgb]

To Gary Garritan and other sample developers:

While I think there are some great new libraries coming out I personally am very leary of buying any expensive ones that are tied to one sample playback device like Kompakt. As new OSX and Windows XP versions come out there is simply no guarantee that a company like N.I. will survive financially through them and therefore be able to continue to update them. Also, frankly, N.I. products have earned a well deserved reputation of not always playing nice with the other children, so to speak.

When I buy samples I want to know that if I need to change my sampler I will still be able to use my expensive sample libraries by conversion to GIga, EXS24, Halion, Mach 5, Kontakt 2, whatever. The audio software world is very fluid and I think this trend is bad.

Just my opinion.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've used NI on several different computers and never had a bit of trouble.

I love NI's products. And I'm seriously not concerned about them going out of business. But if they do, we'll all survive. A lot of companies go out of business and, years later, people are still using their products. Besides, the sample business is moving so rapidly, most of us will want to buy the next best thing anyway...

[Ashermusic]

I agree for the most part. But I've also been reading the Garritan forum for a while and doubt Gary would leave any of us "out in the cold" should NI ever go belly up. I believe he would unlock the samples and allow them to be used in Kontakt (which they already can be as long as you have GPO installed and registered).

Also, just because they are tied to a sample engine you still have all the samples as audio data and all the programming is there. If NI or any other sample engine company were to go broke, there would be a translation program that should unlock these. (and there are always cracks if worse comes to worse, you could crack the player and take the samples to the updated engine of your choice).

I wouldn't worry about it; neither does it make a difference in my purchasing decisions. I have never had any problems with the different players and will be pre-ordering Project SAM's True Strike VI next week so I will see how the HALion player works, but I'm not expecting any problems.

Remapping smaples in different samplers is a big PITA.

You are all making valid points here but at the end of the day if I am given a choice between product A which works in several sampler formats and produtc B which is tied to a particular one I am going to buy product A. And I would still encourage Gary and the other developers not to hitch their wagon to any particular star of the moment, like N.I.'s Kompakt.

Just my opinion.

[Garritan]

To Gary Garritan and other sample developers:

While I think there are some great new libraries coming out I personally am very leary of buying any expensive ones that are tied to one sample playback device like Kompakt. As new OSX and Windows XP versions come out there is simply no guarantee that a company like N.I. will survive financially through them and therefore be able to continue to update them. Also, frankly, N.I. products have earned a well deserved reputation of not always playing nice with the other children, so to speak.

When I buy samples I want to know that if I need to change my sampler I will still be able to use my expensive sample libraries by conversion to GIga, EXS24, Halion, Mach 5, Kontakt 2, whatever. The audio software world is very fluid and I think this trend is bad.

Just my opinion.

When we developed GPO we considered various samplers and players. We chose the Native Instruments Player because it had the features needed. Copy protection was not the major factor in our decision but the ability to perform certain functions was paramount.

When GOS for GigaSampler was first released, I received the same types of concerns. People wanted to use the GOS samples in their AKAI, Rolands and EMU keyboards. Some could not understand why we could not make a 700MB patch work in a 32MB sampler. These hardware samplers could not adapt to the new paradigm and didn't have the features necessary to play GOS.

We simply could not have pulled off GPO in any other sampler. Legato mode, automatic variability, the expression controls and various other features which make GPO unique could not have been done in some of the other samplers. We would have had to increase the sample pool and perhaps develop another program like MaestroTools. With the Kontakt Player we were able to make a small-footprint library do so many things that were not possible with other samplers.

The Kontakt Player enabled us to get the sounds of an orchestra into the hands of many more musicians - "an orchestra on every desktop". The NI Player works on Mac and PC (some samplers only PC), it works as standalone and as a VSTi, DXi, AU and RTAS plugin. So it does play nicely with other children - more so than proprietary samplers.

As to whether N.I. will survive financially, from what I understand their sales of Kontakt are outselling other samplers. I have worked with this company and know the people and I don't think there is anything to worry about in this regard. Take a look at Kontakt2 and you'll see the commitment that Native Instruments has shown to their product line.

The industry is changing so fast and now there are more possibilities than existed a year ago. There are things on the horizon that will bring radical changes to the sampling industry. The trend is looking good.

Gary Garritan

[Ashermusic]

When we developed GPO we considered various samplers and players. We chose the Native Instruments Player because it had the features needed. Copy protection was not the major factor in our decision but the ability to perform certain functions was paramount.

When GOS for GigaSampler was first released, I received the same types of concerns. People wanted to use the GOS samples in their AKAI, Rolands and EMU keyboards. Some could not understand why we could not make a 700MB patch work in a 32MB sampler. These hardware samplers could not adapt to the new paradigm and didn't have the features necessary to play GOS.

We simply could not have pulled off GPO in any other sampler. Legato mode, automatic variability, the expression controls and various other features which make GPO unique could not have been done in some of the other samplers. We would have had to increase the sample pool and perhaps develop another program like MaestroTools. With the Kontakt Player we were able to make a small-footprint library do so many things that were not possible with other samplers.

The Kontakt Player enabled us to get the sounds of an orchestra into the hands of many more musicians - "an orchestra on every desktop". The NI Player works on Mac and PC (some samplers only PC), it works as standalone and as a VSTi, DXi, AU and RTAS plugin. So it does play nicely with other children - more so than proprietary samplers.

As to whether N.I. will survive financially, from what I understand their sales of Kontakt are outselling other samplers. I have worked with this company and know the people and I don't think there is anything to worry about in this regard. Take a look at Kontakt2 and you'll see the commitment that Native Instruments has shown to their product line.

The industry is changing so fast and now there are more possibilities than existed a year ago. There are things on the horizon that will bring radical changes to the sampling industry. The trend is looking good.

Gary Garritan

Gary, I am not talking hardware samplers but other soft samplers. My point is had you done this in Giga format as you have done other libraries, it could be converted with Translator or some of the other translation programs to EXS24, which I use, Halion, Mach 5, Kontakt, Kompakt etc. instead of being married to Kompakt. Gary, respectfully, and I have great respect for you, the blogs are full of people like myself, mostly Mac, whose stability has decreased markedly whenever they use N.I. virtual instruments. I am not trying to knock N.I. here as my argument is for options. Also, it is one thing to be married to a single sampler for a $300 library, quite another for those that are $900 and up.

All I can tell you is that the lack of choices of soft samplers is costing you my purchase of your Gold Pro library. But hey, hopefully for you others will not share my concerns.

[Link F.]

Gold is an East West product, not a Garritan product.

I don't think you have anything to fear, you still have the samples and can use them in a soft sampler, I use GPO in Kontakt everyday. Its just this allows GPO to be used by people who may not own a soft sampler, like your average college student for example.

[Daag Nabbott]

The controllability of GPO right out of the box is priceless. I think that Gary said, that this kind of power wasn't possible/affordable in other engines. He's makin' sense to me. I'm tired of building my own sample banks. Its a tweaker's delight, perhaps, but nowadays I just want something right out of the box that sounds great and doesn't put me in the poor house -- and most of all, leaves me some time to actually make music.

[Haydn]

Well you won't have to worry about hurting Gary's feelings by not purchasing his Gold Pro as that product is put out by a competitor!

As Gary mentioned, the programming of his libraries is heavily programmed for the Kontakt engine. There is no translation software that could convert this deep programming to the other engines. Only fresh programming would work. Since the Kontakt player is available to all users, there is only a small minority of users who wouldn't be able to use the samples with the current player. It would not be profitable to program for the other soft samplers for this reason.

[Christopher Duncan]

And I would still encourage Gary and the other developers not to hitch their wagon to any particular star of the moment, like N.I.'s Kompakt.
One of the things that impressed me about GPO was the extreme, and I do mean extreme, bang for the buck. In addition to a complete and versatile orchestra, it shipped with notation / composition software, a full featured sequencer, and GPO Studio for stand alone applications, in addition to multiple formats of plug-ins. And, of course, it includes the sampler engine capable of performing 100% of what GPO was designed to do. I got all this for $249. I've paid more than that each for any of the individual types of programs listed.

With value like this, I frankly don't care what wagon Gary hitches his products to, since he obviously throws the wagon in for free.

[trentpmcd]

When I originally bought GPO I thought I was buying a library. After using GPO I discovered I bought a musical instrument. With this product it isn’t about the samples themselves (though they are nice), it is the playability factor. There is a lot of programming magic that makes GPO what it is. From what I’ve read (and Gary just seemed to verify), all of this programming magic that makes GPO so great is specific to Kontak.

My 2cents.

[Martin Hines]

Ashermusic,

To a degree I DO think your concerns are valid:

- most Kontakt/Kompakt based libraries being sold today ARE encrypted, so they can 't be easily exported to other samplers. However, as Garry mentioned, Native Instruments appears to be doing well finanancially

- some of the newest libraries are coming out with using the Halion 3 player, and these libraries require a physical USB Key (a USB dongle). You can put all of your authorizations on one key, so you won't have a million keys

- copy protection and "open samples" is the biggest reason I try to support GigaStudio as much as possible. They are the only sampler that still freely allows you to export their samples to .wav files (so you can theoretically "mix and match" sample libraries).

- there are a number of sampling player engines now, and not all of these companies will be around forever
--- Spectrasonics SAGE (Stylus RMX)
--- UVI (Spectracsonics Stylus, Atmosphere, Trilogy, UltraFocus, X-trem FX, Charlie)
--- ULP (Ueberschall BPM120, VCP120, PLP120)
--- Kontakt/Kompakt based (too many to mention, but titles from Garritan, East-West, Best Service, Zero-G)
--- Halion Player (ProjectSam True Strike, Scarbee Vintage Keyboard)

[Link F.]

...GigaStudio...the only sampler that still freely allows you to export their samples to .wav files (so you can theoretically "mix and match" sample libraries)...

I think you need to take a look at ANY Kontakt library again. It is actually the opposite of what you just said. GigaStudio is the only one were the audio wav files are NOT readily available and you have to export them. Any other Kontakt (or HALion) library has a folder right on the disc with the wav files readily available for customization, if such is your thing.

[Garritan]

All I can tell you is that the lack of choices of soft samplers is costing you my purchase of your Gold Pro library. But hey, hopefully for you others will not share my concerns.

I think you have me confused with someone else. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Markleford]

My point is had you done this in Giga format as you have done other libraries, [...]... then it would've had significantly less expression and control capabilities than it has in Kontakt, which is a key feature to GPO (and other specialty Virtual Instruments).

The mistake is in thinking that GPO is "just" a sample library. If that's all you want, then buy a sample library. Quite frankly, I suspect that there are much better sample collections out there in terms of raw articulation count and sample length, but it's important to note that GPO was designed to fit an entire orchestra in 1GB of RAM all at once. Part of that work entailed using looped samples, and one factor of keeping looped samples not sounding like a machinegun is to have auto-variability controls available to the programmer. This is one thing that Kontakt offered that Giga did not at the time, and thus a decision was made on a technical basis.

Now, if an open sampling spec comes along that incorporates this depth of performance modelling, then I'm sure Garritan & Co. will make a move to embrace that market as well. As it stands, not even the mighty Translator can instruct all these different samplers how to perform all the tricks that GPO can do if it were some random converted Giga file. Hopefully the sfz format can be extended a bit further to encompass the performance realm, someday, but for now it's not nearly as simple as you make it out to be.

Besides which, I'm not sure that Giga maintains a superior player or format, nor do I hold their business practices, reliability, and customer treatment in particularly high regard. But if NI products are problematic on Mac, then go with what works for you: it's the beauty of a free market.

- m

[Ashermusic]

I think you have me confused with someone else. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Oops! Sorry, Gary.

[Ashermusic]

... then it would've had significantly less expression and control capabilities than it has in Kontakt, which is a key feature to GPO (and other specialty Virtual Instruments).

The mistake is in thinking that GPO is "just" a sample library. If that's all you want, then buy a sample library. Quite frankly, I suspect that there are much better sample collections out there in terms of raw articulation count and sample length, but it's important to note that GPO was designed to fit an entire orchestra in 1GB of RAM all at once. Part of that work entailed using looped samples, and one factor of keeping looped samples not sounding like a machinegun is to have auto-variability controls available to the programmer. This is one thing that Kontakt offered that Giga did not at the time, and thus a decision was made on a technical basis.

Now, if an open sampling spec comes along that incorporates this depth of performance modelling, then I'm sure Garritan & Co. will make a move to embrace that market as well. As it stands, not even the mighty Translator can instruct all these different samplers how to perform all the tricks that GPO can do if it were some random converted Giga file. Hopefully the sfz format can be extended a bit further to encompass the performance realm, someday, but for now it's not nearly as simple as you make it out to be.

Besides which, I'm not sure that Giga maintains a superior player or format, nor do I hold their business practices, reliability, and customer treatment in particularly high regard. But if NI products are problematic on Mac, then go with what works for you: it's the beauty of a free market.

- m

Indeed I own many sample libraires including the wonderful Garritan Strings. This isn't just about GPO anyway but a whole trend of developers doing these quality libraries like GPO, and MOTU's new one which are tied to proprietary samplers. Perhaps you are right and that is the only way they can get the size and price down but when you see an expensive one like the EWSQL Gold and they are also tied to one sampler personally it gives me cold feet.

At any rate, I appreciate all the good points made here. This is clearly an intelligent group of poeple in this forum and I am glad I joined.

[Markleford]

Perhaps you are right and that is the only way they can get the size and price down but when you see an expensive one like the EWSQL Gold and they are also tied to one sampler personally it gives me cold feet.Well one would hope that linking the content to a proprietary sampler also gives those extra performance capabilities, rather than merely being a way to lock down content to require a registered player. Certainly if you *don't* see evidence of that sort of well-considered performance programming features (and I'm honestly uninformed if EW orchestral offerings do), it can give you pause when reaching for your credit card!

Then again, as Gary alluded to, there's always the option of using a stand-alone MIDI processor with a more "standard" format, like GOS's MaestroTools, but unfortunately having that extra step in the chain gets a lot more customer support calls that having everything in one self-contained virtual instrument.

All the same, I don't think we have much to worry about when dealing with companies of this size. Perhaps it's a bit optimistic, but I do believe they'll "do right by the customer" if it looks like they'll be closing their doors.

(Only ever had one company's product disappear on me with no remaining support: LiveSynth Pro)

Really, companies do have the option of locking down their samples or not, even when working with a Kontakt-based player, but if deterring the casual pirate allows them to make enough money to support the product longer, then I think it's worth forfeiting a piece of my "musical freedom" by limiting the portability of the format. But then again, if the GPO player really is the best way to get the maximum expression out of GPO's samples (in fact, you're paying for that performance programming as well!), then there's nothing lost so long as the player is forward-compatible in future hosts and OSes (which may be questionable on a Mac, I'll agree: they seem to turn things upside-down every few years!).

- m