Lately, I've been thinking of maybe going ahead and installing this along with the free Kontakt Factory Selection library. I have a couple of questions and I'd love to get some feedback from those of you who may have tried it out.
1- In your opinion, are the sounds in NI's free Factory Selection library any good, or are they not very useful?  It does not look like there are very many orchestral instruments included (which would be a bit of a bummer).
2- Are there any third party free libraries that work with Kontakt Player?  If so, recommendations would be great.
 
Thanks,
fj
 
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/samplers/kontakt-5-player/
 
 
 

it's one of them subjective things... try it see what *YOU* think
 
obv. certain libs are the full version only, again have to read the small print a lot.
 
think of it as a sound module, not a lot more tbh. as you don't have the capability of the full version.
 
 

The standard library isn't great - more of a tease.  But NI's extra libraries should work on the "player" software, as well as any library that paid NI.  Heavyocity's libraries worked fine on the player before I upgraded it.  So will others.
 
 

I got it years ago and liked it so much I upgraded to the "real" one.  It's definitely worth a demo

I had to get it when  I bought Cinematic Strings. That's all I use it for. Works fine, but I would prefer the Cinematic Strings developers had chosen something else, or created their own player. It was quite bewildering at first how to actually load the library and then load an instrument. Took me days.

Funny, I was looking into the same thing today for the first time.  If it's free, why not?  But I don't want to jump into something that's not beneficial.  I've downloaded other free products and some are getting used and others are now uninstalled.  After looking into this free offering today, I've decided against it, but that's just my conclusion.

I found installing the Free Kontakt player to be very useful.  Firstly the factory sounds are fine and offer some quite useful patches.
 
The main reason though is that I have a host of other full version synths from Native Instruments themselves that need the free player in order to run.  That makes it reason alone to install it.  It means you don't have to buy the full version of Kontakt in order to use may full versions of other Native synths.
 
Then there are third party synths to which there are many that offer full versions but also run in the free Kontakt player. (there are also plenty that also need the full version of Kontakt to run as well)
 
It depends on your needs but if it involves using either Native synths or other synths then it is a very worthwhile install to do.

I started out with the free version then upgraded to the full version. I think it's great and the free version had some useful samples. Keep in mind that third party samples will not play in the free player version. Actually they play for about 15 minutes. Which I guess gives you enough time to freeze whatever you need.

jmasno5
I started out with the free version then upgraded to the full version. I think it's great and the free version had some useful samples. Keep in mind that third party samples will not play in the free player version. Actually they play for about 15 minutes. Which I guess gives you enough time to freeze whatever you need.

Not completely correct. All the third party synths that I have and run in the player do not have the 15 minute limit imposed at all. The ones that do have the 15 minute  imposed however are usually mentioned on the 3 rd party site. But there are many 3rd party synths out there that work normally in the player with no limitations.

Thank you all for weighing in.  Much appreciated.
 
I'm gonna do a little more searching for some 3rd party free libs that will work with the "player" version.  So far though, I have not had much luck finding any.  If anyone knows of any, please do share.  I did also have a quick look at the Heavyocity offerings (mentioned above), but the only freebie there appears to be some loops.
 
fj