Kontact is a sampler - but can it sample?

No you can't record into Kontakt.
Audacity works great though.

bapu
.

ok, ok, ok, I see your point.

Point n'est besoin d'entreprendre pour espérer ni de persévérer pour réussir.
(ever so slightly edithed, surely old Bill wouldn't mind)

filtersweep
This may be the dumbest question ever. Kontact may be the most ubiquitous sample engine and editor there is, but can it be used out of the box to actually record audio samples? Or do you have to record .wav in another environment and import into Kontact?
 
Brian

It came up in a recent thread about Sonar needing a sampler.  I think that the best suggestion made for that purpose was to get Reason Essentials with the NN-XT sampler, and then re-wire it into Sonar. 
For $69 at https://shop.propellerhea...t/reason-essentials-9/
 
NN-XT
https://www.propellerheads.se/reason/instruments/nn-xt
 
Reason Micro Tutorial - Live Sampling 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZp4ihGyrpM
 
Alternatively, you could use the free TX16Wx sampler http://www.tx16wx.com/ to live sample in Reaper, or any other DAW that lets you connect the audio input to a sampling instrument.

One person (reasonably) asks if Kontakt can sample, others say SONAR needs a sampler. Anybody else see the irony there?
 

A sampler is anything that uses sampled or recorded sounds to generate noise.
 
A synthesizer is anything that produces artificial sounds from a basic sine wave generated electronically.
 
The old Mellotron was an early example of a sampler as it used piano keys to trigger a prerecorded sound on magnetic tape.
 
Technically Kontakt isn't a complete sampler but only part of one as it requires an outside source to actually produce sound. It's more korrektly a sample player/editor.

soens
A sampler is anything that uses sampled or recorded sounds to generate noise.

 
A sample player also does this. A true sampler can record sounds eg An Emulator is a sampler and can make presets from those recordings. What this does allow though is completely original sounds that no one else in the world actually has. For example I have complete banks of EMU sounds that I have sampled and made and are only available to me. Very original. The Kurzweil is also a sampler but also includes a complete synthesis engine called VAST which takes it into some completely diffeent territory.
 

soens
A synthesizer is anything that produces artificial sounds from a basic sine wave generated electronically.

 
A synthesiser uses many more waveforms than a sine wave. eg sawtooth, square, pulse width, noise etc. And this is for the analog synthesis engine only. There are many forms of synthesis engines eg FM, Additive, Granular, Vector, Spectral synthesis. That is very extremely limited view of a synthesiser.
 

soens
The old Mellotron was an early example of a sampler as it used piano keys to trigger a prerecorded sound on magnetic tape.

 
As samplers have the ability to record the Mellotron was a basic form of sample player only. You had to get the tapes and put them in.
 

soens
Technically Kontakt isn't a complete sampler but only part of one as it requires an outside source to actually produce sound. It's more korrektly a sample player/editor.

Yes this is first correct thing you have said here.

I appreciate the fact you liked the added details.  I suppose it harks back to the good old days such as the 80's when samplers were really samplers!  I must admit though that these days I do much less of it. Maybe I should get in there and do it like we used to.  The massive libraries were not around at first and we had no choice in many cases.  What you can certainly do now though is modify sounds in almost an unlimited way which is just as interesting.  But making very original sounds is quite a cool thing to do.
 
Iris 2 is a sampler in a way. It certainly allows you to import your own raw materials and a few others allow it as well very easily.  It is worth investigating if you are in the market for a sample player type device.

 
 To say that is limiting the term to a narrower meaning than it actually has.
 
sam·pler
ˈsamp(ə)lər/
noun: sampler; plural noun: sampler
1. a person or device that samples or collects, prepares, or examines samples
2. something containing representative specimens or selections
3. a piece of cloth embroidered with various stitches, serving to show a beginner's skill in needlework.
4. a collection of samples, selections, etc.
5. an electronic device that digitally encodes and stores samples of sound.
 
So even I can be a sampler.
 
From WIKI:
"A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer, but instead of generating new sounds with filters and oscillators, it uses sound recordings (or "samples") of real instrument sounds (e.g., a piano, violin or trumpet), excerpts from recorded songs (e.g., a five second bass guitar riff from a funk song) or other sounds (e.g., car horns, sirens, ocean waves). The samples are loaded or recorded by the user or by a manufacturer. These sounds are then played back by means of the sampler program itself, a MIDI keyboard, sequencer or another triggering device (e.g., electronic drums) to perform or compose music.
 
Prior to computer memory-based samplers, musicians used tape replay keyboards, which store recordings on analog tape. When a key is pressed the tape head contacts the moving tape and plays a sound. The Mellotron was the most notable model, used by a number of groups in the late 1960s and the 1970s,..."

1. a person or device that samples or collects, prepares, or examines samples
2. something containing representative specimens or selections
3. a piece of cloth embroidered with various stitches, serving to show a beginner's skill in needlework.
4. a collection of samples, selections, etc.
5. an electronic device that digitally encodes and stores samples of sound.
 
This is sampling. This is not about playback, but making samples.
 
If you went into a music shop in 2000 and said 'I'm interested in sampler for making R'n'b and I've seen one I like' and the shop assistant said 'Is it an Akai s900, or MPC, or was it the Emu Ultra you wanted' and you said 'no, it's the emu planet phat', the shop keeper would say 'oh, that's a synth rack, not a sampler, you can't actually sample with that'.
 
A baker bakes
A writer writes
A sampler samples
 
No body ever called a mellotron a sampler in the 60's and 70's. The terminology appeared along with the fairlight.
 
Wikipedia isn't fact. Until about 2005 bands like Prodigy, Orbital, Underworld, Ddaftpunk, Royksopp, were all listed as dance acts, then some young Americans started calling it EDM, and editing the Wikipedia entries. A battle ensued between the older generation that supported these bands in the hayday, correcting the entries back to just dance music, but eventually they gave up and now they are listed as EDM.
 
If Kontact was released in 1997, it would have been called a sample player, because it can't sample. Sampling was central to dance music, but now it's all soundbanks. Which synths have been able to play and load for decades now.

https://www.attackmagazine.com/features/long-read/nine-samplers-that-defined-dance-music/
 

Fleer

Kamikaze
In the 90's, I had an Alesis Quadrasynth.

Still have the original one. Never even tried it. Dern.

OT, but...   I still have a Quadrasynth + Piano (8MB!!!) and use it for live gigs to this day.  In fact, it's the only keyboard I use, 20 years later. 
 

And then, as the great Warren Z professed, let nothing come between us.

Stop pointing at him!