Kontakt - Comments

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi all,
I see that NI is going to release Kontakt this month (well, maybe...) and I was wondering what sort of information people had dug up on this new guy?

1) There was conversation here earlier about whether it would stream larger than memory samples. No one knew. Hallion and eMagic\'s sampler now do. Any updates on Kontakt?

2) I see they say 256 voices for $399 list. That sounds good to me.

3) Any info on whether Kontakt will load a GigaSample library? I\'ve written NI asking.

Other things to talk about in this area??

Cheers,
Mark

[noenoeil]

Bitheadz released their demo of \"Unity Session\" only for Mac (PC later).

\"Mac OS 10.1 and 8.6 through 9.2 compatible
* No additional hardware required
* Outstanding 32-bit, 96 kHz sound quality
* Up to 256 note polyphony (CPU dependent)
* FreeMIDI, OMS, PC-300 & OS X CoreMIDI compatible
* MAS, VST, RTAS, DirectConnect, & ReWire support
* Over 2 gigabytes of content including Black & Whites pianos, Pop Drums, and new Orchestral Strings library\"

Imports Giga, Akai and others.

30 days Demo at http://www.bitheadz.com/ (\"http://www.bitheadz.com/\")

[Mark_Knecht]

noenoeil,
Good morning. Cool. Excuse me for being dense, but I\'m not clear what this has to do with Kontakt?

That\'s not a problem, even if it has nothing to do with Kontakt. I just want to understand. Do you work for bitheadz?

Regards,
Mark

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
Native Instruments informs me by email that Kontakt will read Gig files.

Mark

[Z6]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mark_Knecht:
Hi,
Native Instruments informs me by email that Kontakt will read Gig files.

Mark<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Did they mention whether it will \'stream\'? That is, is it \'Gigastudio PLUS\', or is it a soft synth with some sampling capabilities? I wonder how well it might \'read\' a 2GB piano sample?

I suspect no huge streaming samples, otherwise they\'d be screaming about it. It is so hard to get an answer from manufacturers sometimes when they perceive the answer to the question might show them in a negative light.

Even if it doesn\'t stream, it looks very interesting. I wouldn\'t mind trying it but I\'m scared to try anything these days in case anything messes-up my system.

[Oksi Moron]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Z6:

Did they mention whether it will \'stream\'? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmmm ... I thought the idea was to offer \"granulation\" capabilities as an alternative to streaming. In other words, slice and dice samples (long or short) into tiny \"grains,\" swoosh \'em around, and then the liveliness and variety of each note results from that. There\'s an article by Barry Truax

http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/gsample.html (\"http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/gsample.html\")

that might shed some light.

Don\'t mistake me for an expert on this. I\'ve played around with the freeware Granulab program just long enough to wonder how in fact one modulates a stream of sample grains without introducing \"sidebands\" and other artifacts that are undesirable from the point of view of preserving acoustic realism.

Any thoughts?

Oksi

[Mark_Knecht]

They did not mention this, but he did say it would play all the common piano libraries. We\'ll see!

I\'ll ask in my next email and report back.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Z6:
Did they mention whether it will \'stream\'?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[midphase]

For the record, Kontakt will not stream!

Actuallly NI has a readers\' forum on line and they do provide a bit of info.

Kontakt is just RAM based for now. Right now the only Streaming solutions outside of GIga are HALion (VST dependent) and Unity Session.

[noenoeil]

No, I don\'t work for bitheadz http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif))
Unless they need some french dudes with an ugly english to help them with advertising. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/grin.gif
I talked about Unity because it will target the same market as Kontact, and it has quite the same specifications, that\'s all.
Sorry for the noise.

[Mark_Knecht]

Don\'t be sorry!! I just wasn\'t aware of Unity Session before your note!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by noenoeil:
No, I don\'t work for bitheadz http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif))
Unless they need some french dudes with an ugly english to help them with advertising. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/grin.gif
I talked about Unity because it will target the same market as Kontact, and it has quite the same specifications, that\'s all.
Sorry for the noise.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
Interesting site. Thanks for the pointer.

As for the sideband question, I agree. It would appear difficult, if not impossible, to do.

Possibly what is created, sampled sounds plus artifacts, is really part of the inherant sound of this technology? Unfortunately I could find any mp3s on this site to listen to.

Mark

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Oksi Moron:
Hmmm ... I thought the idea was to offer \"granulation\" capabilities as an alternative to streaming. In other words, slice and dice samples (long or short) into tiny \"grains,\" swoosh \'em around, and then the liveliness and variety of each note results from that. There\'s an article by Barry Truax

http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/gsample.html (\"http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/gsample.html\")

that might shed some light.

Don\'t mistake me for an expert on this. I\'ve played around with the freeware Granulab program just long enough to wonder how in fact one modulates a stream of sample grains without introducing \"sidebands\" and other artifacts that are undesirable from the point of view of preserving acoustic realism.

Any thoughts?

Oksi

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Z6]

Thanks Oksi. Interesting page. I\'ve heard about granular synthesis, but haven\'t read anything on it in a long time. It\'ll be interesting to see what Kontakt offers.

Most of the academic stuff I\'ve seen on granular synthesis seems to concentrate on a kind of \'morphing\' though (interesting in itself). I wonder if granular is the answer (future-wise) to complete control over sampled sounds? With millions of tiny samples, the controller could (presumably) send messages that emulated \'real\' bowing techiquesn etc.; even possibly sending variations of pressure (and other messages) that could control (semi-randomly maybe) each instrument in a string ensemble, so that each new time you played, it would be slightly different, but still under control (expression-wise). Of course, a brainbox-type would have to write algorthims to achieve that, but it might be like having an instrument with almost infinite layers (almost like the \'real\' analog world).

Either way, if the irs come up with my rebate, it\'ll be hard to resist Kontakt; it looks like a lot of fun.

[David Abraham]

I\'d put KontaKt more in the realm of \"Sample Synthesizer.\" Almost like a wave table synth on steroids.

Will most likely be my primary \"sampler\"

-david abraham

[Mark_Knecht]

NI has responded to me. In a VERY LIMITED way they say Kontakt WILL stream. You are correct that Kontakt is limited to the RAM in the system. However, they will support virtual memory, which is disk. So, if you have a library that is larger than physical RAM, but can fit in Physical RAM plus Virtual memory, then they are able to stream from that.

This is really not a great idea, as you\'d have to read the library, write it back to disk again, and then read it from disk while playing with no guarantee that it\'s defragmented or optimized in any way.

Anyway, I thought I\'d pass the information on.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by midphase:
For the record, Kontakt will not stream!

Actuallly NI has a readers\' forum on line and they do provide a bit of info.

Kontakt is just RAM based for now. Right now the only Streaming solutions outside of GIga are HALion (VST dependent) and Unity Session.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>



[This message has been edited by Mark_Knecht (edited 04-15-2002).]

[David Abraham]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mark_Knecht:
NI has responded to me. In a VERY LIMITED way they say Kontakt WILL stream. You are correct that Kontakt is limited to the RAM in the system. However, they will support virtual memory, which is disk. So, if you have a library that is larger than physical RAM, but can fit in Physical RAM plus Virtual memory, then they are able to stream from that.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

...that\'s very interesting, there\'s development feature in Win2k/WinXP called \"Memory Mapped I/O\" I often wondered if this could be used for streaming

-david abraham

[Timo Heil]

>>Right now the only Streaming solutions outside of GIga are HALion (VST dependent) and Unity Session.<<

emagic\'s EXS24 now also offers streaming, though it does not yet import the Giga format.