Kontakt 2

[realtrance]

Ok, hopefully right forum, since I would use this with a keyboard attached.....

 

Any professional comments on Kontakt 2? Is it useable? Much more than that? Any current gotchas in terms of hardware or installation I should be aware of?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

[linwood]

I use it on everything I do. It works perfectly for me, no crashes. The lib that comes with it....I never use, so keep that in mind. Don't buy it thinking that K2 alone is gonna make your productions smoke. Treat yourself to a couple libs in K2 format and you'll be a happy camper.

[Mark Schmieder]

I do find the Vienna instruments in K2 usable, but so far haven't used anything else in it. I have heard many say that it is the easiest sampler to work with for quickly building libraries, but that MOTU Mach Five is the best for deeper editing (although its users are frustrated by no release date for UB).

[Mark Schmieder]

As for performancce, I am finding Kontakt2 to run very well on my 800 MHz G4 iMac, even with eight or more instruments loaded at once. This really surprised me, as I figured it would crash (as do some of my soft synths).

[realtrance]

Thanks for the input! Yeah, I wouldn't count on default sound libraries, or anything, to improve my work for me. OTOH it sounds at least like the default library covers all the basics, what criticisms do you have of it?

[Mark Schmieder]

other than the Vienna stuff, the default libraries are VERY low resolution, like an early 90's hardware ROMpler. They wouldn't even do in a pinch, in my opinion. No details, no expression, and a very compressed bandwidth and frequency range.

[Clifton]

There's some great libraries in K2 format, and Kontakt gives you a hefty amount of tweakability for said libraries.

Scarbee VKC is a good example.

[RABid]

I've imported most of my Giga libraries into it. The Scarbee stuff is really nice.

[Yoozer]

It's replaced my hardware completely. The difference between trying to drag anything kicking and screaming into an E-mu ESI 4000 and moving it smoothly into Kontakt - night and day.

 

The included VSL Kontakt edition is really nice. I've imported all the E-mu libraries - too bad there's no way yet to import Yamaha A4000 libraries, too.

 

I use it for drumkits, too - just drag in a folder full of one-shot vintage drum machine samples and you have a kit to play with. Just amazing. Battery would be a better solution for that, but Kontakt allows just as much - and more.

 

The only thing I'm missing is a perfect-loop tool - I don't have a Mac for Antares Infinity and even then it's stupidly expensive for such an old piece of software.

[realtrance]

I'm a bit old-school, and for the music I like to do, most of the instruments don't have to be precise, lifelike simulations of natural instruments with wide dynamic and frequency range (the place where low-res samples are the biggest issue) -- and yes I'd look elsewhere for that anyways, or do my own sampling -- but, yes, thanks for the clarification, Mark!

 

[Mark Schmieder]

All of my notes are at home, but I seem to recall that if you buy Kore 2, you will get additional libraries that are medium to high quality, just as Kontakt 2 comes with a small subset of Vienna. I think Kore 2 comes with a subset of Sonic Implants? I'm unclear on whether you need to also purchase/own Kontakt 2 to use Kore 2.

[DanS]

Kore2 is slated to ship with a 500 sound library. They have dumped the audio i/f on it as well, since most people already had an audio card. I'm keeping it in my radar, being able to have all your soft synth patches & effects catalogued in one spot is pretty sweet.

[realtrance]

Ok another quick question: I noticed in a brief review of Kontakt 2 on Cacophony Central that the sample loop points are not modulatable... how much of an issue is this? It's something I've enjoyed on my Audity 2000 for years (if I'm not confusing two different things here) and I'm surprised it's not available on a soft-sampler of this quality.