No it doesn't. Though as Keith mentioned, if you really want that particular library, you can install the player just for Studio Drummer and keep on using Kontakt 4 for the rest. 

I maybe missing something, though. Maybe there's some features you'd like to use w/ SD that can only be accessed in the full version. (?)

I use Kontakt player, because I have to - it's the default player for Steven Slate and Scarbee. It seems quite nice for a freebie. 

I don't know exactly all what I'm missing, but, anyway, the full-blown Kontakt would be waaaaaay too much for me. I like simple, like my good old EXS24 in Logic. 

yorolpal


Does the player have all the functionality and tweakability of Kontakt full?  If so, great!

Rhetorical question. You know the answer.

Is your preference to take this 17GB sample library and start mapping out 1000's of samples into your own custom patches over a spare weekend? Maybe adjust some loop points and zone group envelopes? Write some custom KSP scripts? Come on now. Sounds like you're arguing for argument's sake. For all I know you're a Kontakt power user, who knows.

Behind the glass, STUDIO DRUMMER provides a dedicated mixing environment. All drums close mic’d, plus adjustable snare bleed, stereo overheads, room mics for ambience and an additional mono mic on the entire kit. Mixer presets, with precision mic levels, room sound and effects, provide fast-track settings for a wide range of sounds.

A high-quality studio effects section gives you warm tape saturation, convolution reverb and three big-league effects: the SOLID G-EQ, the SOLID BUS COMP compressor and the awe-inspiring TRANSIENT MASTER.

[...]

The mixer section in STUDIO DRUMMER provides ultra-precise control over the mic levels on each drum, plus overheads, stereo room mics and a mono mic on the entire kit to pull things together. The mix presets put pro sound just a click away, and provide a perfect starting point for detailed tweaking.

Each snare provides faders for top and bottom mic, plus adjustable bleed level. Here, ‘bleed’ refers to how the rest of the kit rattles the snare wires — raise the bleed level for more realism. On the kick, adjust the level of the inside and outside mics, plus an additional ‘sub’ fader, to get the perfect amount of click vs. boom.

Sounds like quite a bit of tweakability in the "performance view" to me.

bitflipper


I listened to the demos, and, like most NI demos, they sound great.

They're a bit late to the game, though, and you have to wonder if the marketplace is really screaming for yet another drum sampler.

I'm definitely a gear/Plugin junkie.   But even I am passing on this one.   BFD2, SD2, etc.  Got 'em. 

I agree with you bit, a little late to the game they are.

strikinglyhandsome1


Cheers windsurfer.

How's the plug-in buying and selling going?
I've stopped buying for a while - well apart from the odd no-brainer.
I think I've got all my sounds covered - famous last words.

I'd love to up my PC specs - maybe next year.

I noticed you got Geist. Tempting as I really like Guru.

For whatever my opinion may be worth - Geist is a far improved plugin.  All the good from Guru - but tons more stuff that's sensible, usable and tweakable.

And it comes with some GREAT samples/projects done by some big name artists.

My 1st impression of Studio Drummer Demo that it was a rip off of Session Drummer.  IMO

yorolpal

You need more bran in your diet Keith, ol pal.  My question was an honest one.  

OK, so your previous comment wasn't meant to present a rhetorical question followed by a sarcastic response. My fault, apologies, that's how I read it.

edrummist




I have Superior Drummer and most expansions, ezDrummer and most expansions, Ocean Way Drums, BFD Eco, Battery, Sonic Reality's Neil Peart Drums, Abbey Road 60s Drums, Addictive Drums and the Retro and Funk expansions, most of Sonic Reality's Drum Master, Waves Factory Tea Towel Drums, Session Drummer and more and I still want Studio Drummer!

I think that you definitely need more drum libraries
 
 
I listened to the demos of Studio Drummer and maybe I'm the only one here,but I was a little underwhelmed...
 
Sorry to be a party pooper,but I'll have to wait and play with the dry drums until I pass judgement...
 
 
The demos are overly compressed and in a few cases,the levels in the compressors are "too hot" = distortion...
 
Too much compression is a sure fire way of sucking the life out of anything - including drums... They could also make better use of some EQ and shelving to get rid of the bottom end mud that is helping to block up the compressors....
 
Use that new SSL stuff in Kontakt 5 properly 
 
Also,there's no real definition in the individual drums - the snares being a prime example...Not enough "snap" 
 
This is mainly caused by too much "room sound" and not enough close mic in the mix...It's easy to make a solo'd track sound "impressive" with a heap of reverb,but in a real mix,it's going to cause too much "wallow" and there will never be enough real "clarity" in the track....Good luck mixing that one !
 
So I will wait and listen to the raw material before I pass judgment on Studio Drummer because those demos don't tell me enough of what I really need to know..... 
 
But like I said before,it's going to take something very serious to knock Superior and the SDX's off my throne...
 
I know a guy in Los Angeles who mixes and re-mixes some very high end work and the ONLY drum library that he never really has to touch is Superior 2...
 
Enough said       
 

Drewfx1
I have to say I do not think Bit's "rant" as you put it, is quite as "ignorant" as you seem to think.
Most of us have had problems in one way or another with NI - be it buggy products or abysmal customer service.
Now recently we have had the Kore Fiasco.
If you would like to cast your mind back to last year, NI were very busily telling us that thier "Kore" (sorry pun intended!) products going forward into a vibrant future were if I remember correctly :-
1) Kore
2) Maschine
3) Kontakt
4) Guitar Rig

Relying on this (stupid me taking a software company at its word!) I personally only bought into the Kore "future" last year - now I find not even I year on that I have spent a great deal of money on a lame duck product and a lovely looking piece of hardware which will be ready to throw in the waste bin very soon.

So personally I think everyone should be just a little sceptical of Ni's intentions.

Perhaps thinking Kontakt 5 is nice nice shiny new super duper product as opposed to a cynical marketing ploy to extract yet more money from it's long suffering customer base, could be viewed as a little naive? Certainly one should consdier all viewpoints.

I know for my part I can only concur with Bit in feeling that kontakt 5 is probably little more than  another  NI marketing ploy. Are there any "new" features really worth spending yet more money on upgrading to? Doubtful in my view.
I know I shall not be jumping on that particlaur Bandwagon sooner than I am forced to, as I am sure I will be at sometime or another by the inevitable non backwards compatibility of libraries as they are either upgraded or launched.

Anyway just thought I would add my view of what is going on.
Keep well
Nigel

yorolpal


No probs, ol pal.  Heck...now that I, myownself, read it back I can see that take on it easy.  My initial post was prompted by so many of my recent library purchases (tonehammer and others) which all caution that they will not even operate using the Kontakt player which led me to believe that NI's stuff might have similar scripting strictures from version to version.  I've got more NI stuff than Carter's got little liver pills anyway and I think I may just pass (for the first time ever) on this new 5 series.

It's not "limitations", per se, to my knowledge (except perhaps for the few inexplciably missing frobs here and there, as Glyn pointed out)... The Player serves two purposes for NI:
 
1.) It's a playback engine for "registered libraries" -- i.e., libraries for which vendors have paid a not-insubstantial licensing fee to NI to have specially encrypted and encoded (for "content protection") and branded as such. NI sells some of their own in-house and licensed content this way.
 
2.) For non-registered libraries (which would otherwise only open in Kontakt full), the Player will load such a lib and drop into Kontakt full demo mode for 15 minutes at a time -- so the player is also a marketing vehicle
 
The underlying engine for playback purposes is Kontakt in both cases. In addition, Kontakt full provides the complete set of edit functionality for creating new NKI/NKM patches, zones, groups, editing sample properties, creating scripts, etc. Note that even with Kontakt full you don't have complete edit capability over a registered library (e.g., accessing sample content) as you would with a open-format library. Registered libraries typically provide their own "performance view", which is generally a custom skin sitting on top of a KSP-scripted UI for controlling the public aspects of the library... moving a mic position, tweaking filters, whatever. I'm surprised to hear there's even the smallest tidbit of playback functionality missing from Player, since that wouldn't be in the interest of NI or their licensed library vendors.
 
The real problem is not that Kontakt keeps getting better, but that a particular library vendor (including NI) would not provide some form of backward-compatible version of their library... say v3 patches that may not perform as well, etc., but also don't leave out those who don't want/need to upgrade. Sometimes that's not practical, I guess, but in the case of this drum library kinda silly if the only really new feature is the MIDI thing, which for many people could just as well be optional.
 
Anyway... nice sample engine, polarizing company. Whaddayawant?

Bajan Blue


Drewfx1
I have to say I do not think Bit's "rant" as you put it, is quite as "ignorant" as you seem to think.
Most of us have had problems in one way or another with NI - be it buggy products or abysmal customer service.
Now recently we have had the Kore Fiasco.
 

You misunderstand. I'm not dismissing all of the valid criticisms he's made of NI, and agree with many of them. 

But if one makes an unfair or invalid criticism, that's different. So if someone complains about "a new version every 6 months" (when it's actually been close to 2 years, though it might not seem that long), or complains about a new library requiring the latest version to "force you to upgrade" (when major selling points of that library actually requires the new functionality of the newest version, and you could always use the free player with that library anyway), then it's only fair to point that out.

I've got Kore2 and several of the expansion packs.  Kore2 (at least for me) does not work at all on my 64bit system, even bridged.  And the expansion packs won't run in my Kontakt 4.2.3.  I'm simply hoping that NI fixes that situation before discontinuing Kore altogether.

Twigman


Superior Drummer 2.0 is all I need - I can get the drums to actually sound like our drummer.

That's very interesting   
   
I have to agree...The S2 drums are Superior...
 
They just sit "right" in the mix - every time...
 
Quality over quantity is never a bad way to travel   
 
No point jamming up your hard drives with pooh...

digitalboy

But we still all get sucked in by the seductive ad copy and the slick pics...

Not me. I get sucked in by all the cool 3rd party libraries like SampleModelling, AcousticSamples, OrangeTree, etc. Me likey.

 
The comment about NI being a polarizing company is 100% correct...
 

Luckily I feel like I'm sitting on the positve pole with NI. (er... uh... yeah, whatever... you know what I mean). Other than B4II being discontinued, which I had since replaced with VB3 anyway, my overall experience with K1.5 through K4 + various player libs over the years has been pretty positive. Maybe if I had been sucked into Kore and that verb thing and whatever I would feel differently.

There will be a lot of post traumatic stress over the Kore fiasco for a long time to come... 
 

If a product doesn't make financial sense then it doesn't make financial sense. But still... you still have to do everthing you can to not strand your loyal customers. How much would it really cost them to throw a free crossgrade to Kontakt or something equivalent for all existing Kore users?In monetary terms a big write-off to be sure, but in terms of customer relations, PR, company image, well worth the cost. Better than any ad campaign... let the KVRs and gearslutz of the DAW world do the work for you. Post some youtube videos about "The Transition", and how you're not leaving your loyal customers in the lurch. After all, how many of those crossgrade users that don't already own Kontakt or some other combination of NI products would have bought it anyway? Increase your user base. Lock 'em in. Sometimes you need a little less "too bad for you, live with it" and more "let's see if we can make everybody think we're the coolest company in the industry", despite what the bean counters say.  

yorolpal


My experience, with the exception of Kore2, echoes Keith's.  In all honesty (and like Sonar) I really don't tap into the vast power of Kontakt nearly as much as I probably should.  I've stuck with it and gone the Komplete route due to my initial invesment (since their beginnings) in NI stuff and the plethora of third party libraries for the platform.  I've had an up and down relationship with NI lo these many years but overall I can't really complain.  I want Kore2 to either be ported to 64bit so I can use it again...OR...be made to work under Kontakt.  We'll see. 
 

I think that many of us Komplete users are in the same boat...
 
We have Komplete,but our use of it is actually quite "Inkomplete"
 
I mainly use Kontakt with some Battery and a small dose of FM8...That's it really...
 
Like everyone here,I have a ton of VI's,plugins and TB's of samples and loops,but lately I have been trying to focus on just a few choice pieces and really get to know them well...
 
I love Rene's VI's - a real shame that he's not at CW anymore - and the open source sfz format has so many possibilities.....
 
There's heaps of good work that can be done with Dimension Pro,Rapture and ARIA + z3ta+... 
 
Unfortunately Session Drummer is quite undercooked and needs some serious development...It's still a little like amateur half hour at this point...
 
So Kontakt 4 and a bit of Battery will remain my main focus with NI from here on in,but I will "monitor" the new offerings and may consider an upgrade to KAte at some point...  
 
The new tools inside Kontakt 5 do look like they could be very useful so it really depends on how good she performs without all of that makeup on... 
 
I want to try and keeps things fairly simple and focus on the creative elements of the music...
 
I've always admired men who have been able to create great things with just their mind and a pencil