#1003095 - 08/09/05 03:17 PM
Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Registered: 08/23/04
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Loc: Austin, TX
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Anyone picked up the new Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Sampler? I just read a blurb in MIX about it, and it says that it can play surround samples, has 42 surround effects, and offers surround convolution reverbs. Can anyone expand on what all it does in the surround realm? I read a while ago that Absynth 3 also supports surround sound, some sort of quad soft synth or something? I'll buy them soon, just thought I'd get some reviews first.
Thanks,
Eric Day
Austin, TX
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#1003096 - 08/10/05 09:02 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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For certain.
Not sure where they got 42 Surround FX from though - not in my copy there isn't!I think they mean it has 42 different multichannel configurations, ranging from Mono & LFE through just about every possible combination with a maximum of 16 channels of output depending on your system config & hardware.
The convolution reverb included is a bog standard type. This can also be used in MC modes. It's okay, but considering what is available in a dedicated Surround reverb like WizooVerb W5, then it is strictly second division only. Nothing like the control of W5.
Grab a demo of it - it's fun to play with if you are into the need for this (I do) and has a steep learning curve.
Very powerful sampler.
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#1003097 - 08/10/05 02:20 PM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Registered: 08/23/04
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Loc: Austin, TX
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Thanks for the info Neil. I never knew about the M-Audio WizooVerb W5 plug-in. What a great setup, especially for the price. This is definitely next on my list. I'll mess around with the Kontakt Demo.
It looks to me that we are on the verge of a whole bunch of affordable yet powerful surround tools, plug-ins for reverbs, delays, sound design, sampling, etc. I guess we're already there. Surround is getting more and more affordable to jump in to.
Are there any other dedicated surround plug-ins that you like?
Thanks,
Eric Day
Austin, TX
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#1003098 - 08/13/05 10:40 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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Dedicated Surround plugs are thin on the ground for PC. You have more choice on a Mac at this time.
There are some good ones though:
Voxengo's PristineSpace is up to 8 channels of convolution, and can also be used for serial convolution in stereo.
There is Steinberg's Surround Edition bundle, which has an 8 channel EQ, Reverb, Compressor, Maximizer, LFE Splitter & combiner. The EQ is a good one, as it is the multichannel version of the old favourite Q-Metric.
There is a shareware collection at http://www.cubaselessons.co.uk/surroundplugs.htm that has some fun stuff
Also a new collection from Starplugs, with exciters, compressors, phasers, delays, panners - all sorts. http://www.starplugs.com/sess/utn;jsessionid=1542fe14078fee7/shopdata/index.shopscript
will get you there.
There really is not that much out there right now, sad to say.
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#1003099 - 08/13/05 10:48 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Neil,
I'm interested in checking out those freeware VST plugins. Can you check the link on the cubase lessons surround plugins, it didn't work. File 404 not found or something.
Thanks,
Eric Day
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#1003100 - 08/17/05 11:31 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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Eric.
Try this
http://www.cubaselessons.co.uk/SurroundPlugs.htm
Perhaps the 2 capital letters make a difference? I just tried it and it works here.
Failing that, send me an email address and I will get them to you another way.
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#1003101 - 08/17/05 01:44 PM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Registered: 08/23/04
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Thanks Neil, the new link works. Cool stuff for sure. Do you know if it's OSX compatible? I didn't see anything listed on the website. You run a PC with Nuendo, right? Seems so many plug-ins of this nature are PC only. Good for some, but what a bummer if you have a MAC. I should have thought more about my G5 investment. Oh well.
Eric Day
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#1003102 - 08/18/05 07:51 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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I don't know - for the Mac you can get the Waves 360 bundle, which is very good indeed.
The Steinberg Surround Edition is Mac/PC, Wizoo's W5 Reverb is Mac/PC. Voxengo is PC only, as are starplugs & TonyB's package, being made with synthedit as they are.
Fact is, there are not that many Surround plugs out there.
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#1003103 - 08/18/05 12:21 PM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Looks like WizooVerb W5 for now, which should be great. You're right, there are not that many dedicated surround plugins for PC or MAC, especially MAC. The Waves 360 bundle is only for Pro Tools TDM systems on PC or MAC to my knowledge.
Eric
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#1003104 - 08/19/05 05:24 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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Also HTDM, whatever that is, on a ProTools XP system....
But we need more, that's for sure.
I really can recommend the Steinberg Surround Edition too. That is both Mac & PC, and you get some very useful tools in it.
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#1003106 - 08/29/05 06:16 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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The Acousmodules tools are okay as far as they go, but there are a lot of Panners/Encoders for LCRS type of thing there.
What we need are more dedicated tools for genuine FX, Processing, EQ that sort of thing.
I'm getting more & more into those Starplugs tools right now. http://www.starplugs.com/sess/utn;jsessionid=154207347f6422f/shopdata/index.shopscript
Still PC only, but for the money they are very hard to beat.
I also wish Waves would port the 360 tools.
For mac, that is the best option right now in combination with Wizoo's W5 reverb (dual platform)
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#1003107 - 08/29/05 01:43 PM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Loc: Austin, TX
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I just ordered the WizooVerb W5 for my MAC. Should be in this week. I can't wait, as I just lined up my first 5.1 music client :-D. Doing some demo 5.1 mixes of electronic music to propose to the label. Time to get creative!
Congrats too, Neil, on your MIX mention and EM article. We have a voice out there ;-) Tell 'em wussup!!!
Cheers,
Eric Day
A Day's Production
Austin, TX
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#1003108 - 08/29/05 02:31 PM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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What MIX mention?
Can you post me a link please??
As for a voice, sad to say I've always been a bigmouth, and will large up Surround & multichannel every chance I get.
This is a really top little community here, all good people, some great ideas & combinations of talent.
I like it here and will tell the world - if the buggers will listen!
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#1003109 - 08/30/05 02:30 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Registered: 08/23/04
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Loc: Austin, TX
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Oops!!! My bad. There's no mention in MIX. I have so many magazines I thought I saw you mentioned in two. Sorry for the confusion. I just looked up the article in Electronic Musician and got it straightened out.
I like it! Top little community. I'm with ya. Buggers listen!
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#1003110 - 08/31/05 03:07 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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jm.duchenne
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Registered: 08/26/05
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Loc: France
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The Acousmodules tools are okay as far as they go, but there are a lot of Panners/Encoders for LCRS type of thing there.
Not that I don't want to force anybody to look at them (!), only restore a fact for people who are searching for such kind of plugins, which seemed to be the case here...
- 19 surround plugins (5.0 to 7.1, spatialization, effects and instruments)
- 20 octophonic (8.0, , spatialization, effects and instruments too)
- 22 spatialization (12 to 32 channels)
- 8 instruments (16 channels)
- 8 effects (16 channels)
plus MIDI controllers and utilities.
There is a very few ones for Mac, but there must be more in the next months.
Cheers,
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#1003111 - 08/31/05 06:22 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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Sorry, but I see a lot of panners & spatialization processors, and maybe 3 effect ones, one of which is a reverb engine based on FreeVerb.
There are a lot of MIDI controlled instruments too.
This is not what I consider to be effects - I am looking for things like EQ, Compression, Chorus, Delays, that sort of thing.
From the 19 Surround plugins, the lions share are panners or variants on the theme.
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#1003112 - 08/31/05 11:27 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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doug osborne
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Registered: 08/15/00
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Loc: Culver City, CA, US
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Just FYI, Sonar Producer Edition not only has a pretty good surround reverb, the Lexicon Pantheon Surround, but also a feature called Surround Bridge which takes any plugin and makes it surround. CPU-hog plugins can bring an otherwise-working system to its knees when opened with Surround Bridge, but that's not Sonar's fault.
You can buy SPE these days for not a lot of money because Cakewalk will be coming out with a version upgrade this fall, and SPE makes a great PC-based surround mixing platform with a gentle learning curve.
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#1003113 - 08/31/05 06:51 PM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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Registered: 08/23/04
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Loc: Austin, TX
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Yeah, I'm about to find out just how far I can push my G5 with the Wizooverb W5 plugin. I will have 4 gigs of RAM shortly. I'm thinking it will be fine, we'll see. I'm sure the next step in line with my project studio setup and budget would be to get a dedicated processor like a Kurzweil or similar unit, basically get the processing out of the host for effects.
Other than owning a Lexicon or TC Electronic dedicated surround unit, what has your experience been in pushing the host computer with plugins in 5.1 sessions, with 24 plus tracks? I'm just curious.
Thanks,
Eric Day
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#1003114 - 09/02/05 06:43 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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What sample rates are we talking about?
48 or 96KHz?
I'm getting as many tracks as I need so far - 32 tracks at 24/96, with 2 W5, a couple of 5.1 compressors, 5.1 limiter, all sorts really.
Never found the limits yet.....
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#1003115 - 09/07/05 11:18 PM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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48 KHz for now. Actually, I've had no problems yet, with up to 22 tracks. I run the VST Performance meter in the corner of one of my monitors, and it's only getting up to 30 or 40%. There's been a couple of crashes, but no big deal. Apple S to the rescue ;-) I made the habit of saving quite frequently. There's probably an autosave in Cubase SX 3.0. I haven't looked into it yet. All is good so far.
Now I just need to figure out why my 5.1 bounces have an empty output 4 track. Everything is out of wack. The project is 100% as far as the surround mix, but the final bounce does not match up when I re-import the six mono files. Track 4 is empty, no audio?
In my VSt connections, 1=Left, 2=Right, 3=Surround Left, 4=Surround Right, 5=Center, and 6=LFE. These output assignments make it so that my SPL SMC 2489 matches up with my monitors. Something is out of order somewhere. My VST connection window is in German too! You would think Steinberg would notice this by now with the forums and all. Weird. Maybe I have a bug no one else has. At least I can make sense of the German for the channel assignments. Mitte = Center, Links= Left, Recths=Right, etc. OK, now I'm babbling. Time to sleep.
Thanks,
Eric Day
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#1003116 - 09/08/05 03:04 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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The correct sequence really should be
1/. Left Front
2/. Right Front
3/. Centre
4/. LFE
5/. Left Rear
6/. Right Rear
This is how Nuendo/Cubase export, and unless you are piping material directly into the LFE channel will explain why you are getting an empty file.
Autosave in SX is under File/Preferences.
I don't use Autosave myself, as it can be embarrassing for the system to do one of these right in the middle of either an edit or a great take. Incremental saves are better for me. The new 3.1 version of Nuendo has some nice save options....and I believe they are also in SX.
But your export issue is as I wrote - on Export, the SMPTE standard is used for channel assignments.
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#1003117 - 09/09/05 10:32 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Eric Day
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I'll look into this. I suppose regardless of how I arranged my outputs leaving Cubase to my monitors, when I export, the mono files will be in the SMPTE order, as Cubase labels them 1-6 after the file name. I sure Wish Steinberg would just put a letter after the file corresponing to the channel. Oh well. I'll get used to it like everyone else has. I'll bounce down again and see if it works. Thanks for all the support Neil. You rock!
Cheers,
Eric Day
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#1003118 - 09/10/05 08:56 AM
Re: Kontakt 2 Surround Features
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Neil Wilkes
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I completely agree about the lettering rather than the somewhat ambiguous numbering system currently used.
I have the same gripe with Nuendo.
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