Glyn Barnes
I have had a few goes at making my own Kontakt libraries.

1- Record every semitone of the instrument in Sonar.
2- Split the track into individual notes
3- Adjust tuning in melodyne if required.
4- Export WAV files and edit them Audacity.
5- Import and map the samples on Kontakt.

Its still a bit amateurish as I am yet to introduce velocity layers and round robins.

Fortunately Hollow Sun have a nice scripted front end that adds filter, envelope and other controls with minimal effort. http://www.hollowsun.com/...ts/gui_shell/index.htm

 
I've tried making my own Kontakt instrument and in the end, what with the complexity and scope of sampled instruments these days, I figured I'd just leave it to the experts. Ain't got time for that. 
 
Having said that, taking a simple "one sample per key" approach to an instrument does get you that retro sound from back in the day, especially if you take one sample and re-pitch it to multiple keys. If that sample is a chord then you get that old skool techno sound from back when chord samples were played at different pitches resulting in some often weird parallel harmonies. If the sample has a rhythmic element then you get some odd timing when playing it back at different pitches, another retro techno sound. 
 
It's fairly easy to splice a drum loop across the keys with Kontakt though, something I'd be grateful for if I didn't have Geist. 
 
 

sharke
Regardless of any debate about the meaning of the word "sampler," I must admit that when I first explored Kontakt I was shocked that you couldn't sample audio with it, and this led me to question what I'd heard everyone saying about it being the industry standard sampler. 
 
[snip] 
I wonder what's stopped NI from introducing recording functionality into Kontakt. It doesn't seem like it would be too much of an undertaking, Geist does it without much fanfare. 

There are so many existing ways of recording and editing audio material that it doesn't seem like there's much point to having Kontakt do that. Most of the people who actually use Kontakt to create new instruments have gotten along fine without that functionality being there.  
 
In short, economics.  It costs time and money to add this feature, and it doesn't seem like something that will shift units of anything.  There are a lot of people who say they want this feature, but haven't really gotten the impression that the lack of it has stopped anyone from buying or upgrading, or that adding it would make those who have been dragging their feet suddenly buy in.

wavsaur is a nice editor also, I use it for finding loop points easily, really quickly
 

""
Regardless of any debate about the meaning of the word "sampler," I must admit that when I first explored Kontakt I was shocked that you couldn't sample audio with it, and this led me to question what I'd heard everyone saying about it being the industry standard sampler. ...""
 
Thanks Sharke. Glad I am not the first to wonder about this. That is exactly why I asked. I have owned Kontact for a few years and use it quite a bit. But as it often referenced as the "industry leading sampler" I just questioned if there was something under the hood that I was missing. Apparently I'm old school on this having gotten into this in the 80's when a "sampler" could actually sample. I guess today, with seemingly endless sample libraries readily available, the distinction for most is meaningless. But they wouldnt have called it a sampler back in the 80s!☺
 
Brian

I wonder if you can drag a clip from Sonar's track view into Kontakt's sample map? I will try this later.

filtersweep
Apparently I'm old school on this having gotten into this in the 80's when a "sampler" could actually sample. I guess today, with seemingly endless sample libraries readily available, the distinction for most is meaningless. But they wouldnt have called it a sampler back in the 80s!☺

Early samplers had to include everything you needed for recording and editing audio files. Buying the necessary gear separately would have been horribly expensive and clunky. 
 
Imagine what the workflow would have been like in the 80's if they hadn't included those capabilities. I don't have to imagine it, I experienced it. And my project was dead simple compared to building an instrument; I was just putting recorded speech onto EPROMs using a home-made resistor-matrix ADC. It was a time-consuming chore, fraught with errors and many do-overs, and the end results were less than impressive. Of course, at the time we were tickled just to hear speech come out of a computer.
 
 

bitflipper

filtersweep
Apparently I'm old school on this having gotten into this in the 80's when a "sampler" could actually sample. I guess today, with seemingly endless sample libraries readily available, the distinction for most is meaningless. But they wouldnt have called it a sampler back in the 80s!☺

 
Early samplers had to include everything you needed for recording and editing audio files. Buying the necessary gear separately would have been horribly expensive and clunky. 
 
 

That's true. I have an Akai Z8 that I got around 2002. I haven't done any sampling with it, but I didn't plan to, although I have used it for some re-sampling. You could not only get realistic sounds, but sounds from classic synths and keyboards and, of course, mix and match. The other choice would have been a ROMpler, but then you were pretty much limited to what the manufacturer provided. I have almost the complete Akai sample library as well quite a few libraries from Hollow Sun.
 
I've also converted S-550 samples to the Akai format and I've converted/imported Akai samples into Alchemy. Now that we have software based sample players the ability to sample isn't a big deal to me, I just want to be able to add sample libraries. I've done a little sampling in the the past and I've fixed/improved some poor looped samples, but getting good loops is a lot of work, I prefer to leave that to the professionals. 

Glyn Barnes
I wonder if you can drag a clip from Sonar's track view into Kontakt's sample map? I will try this later.

I would imagine so.  But I don't have the full Kontakt sampler, so I tried it with the TX16Wx sampler. Also checked it with the Structure sampler.  That works as well.
 
If Sonar allows drag n drop like that, it should work for any app, just like with Dropzone.
 
Just simply drag n drop the wav either from track view, or directly from the media browser, onto the sampler keyboard mapper.  Then open the wave editor, and set loop points.  Good to go!

rsinger
I've also converted S-550 samples to the Akai format and I've converted/imported Akai samples into Alchemy. Now that we have software based sample players the ability to sample isn't a big deal to me, I just want to be able to add sample libraries. I've done a little sampling in the the past and I've fixed/improved some poor looped samples, but getting good loops is a lot of work, I prefer to leave that to the professionals.

Hey rsinger is there any way I could get a copy of your S550 samples converted to Akai format.  Be happy to pay you too.  Are they in Akai CD ROM format?  I only say this because both my Kurzweil and EMU hardware samplers are actually very clever enough to be able to read both Roland and Akai libraries without a hitch.  Pretty cool feature really.  I have extended my EMU library because of this to now include pretty extensive Akai and Roland libraries as well.  Of course the same sounds in the EMU actually sound nicer to me!

abacab

Glyn Barnes
I wonder if you can drag a clip from Sonar's track view into Kontakt's sample map? I will try this later.

I would imagine so.  But I don't have the full Kontakt sampler, so I tried it with the TX16Wx sampler. Also checked it with the Structure sampler.  That works as well.

I just tried this. Its very simple to drag an audio clip from Sonar directly into Kontakt's sample mapping. This provides a very easy workflow for basic tasks.