swamptooth


k5 improvements
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan12/articles/ni-kontakt-5.htm

Thanks. I just checked the product page and found that the upgrade price from K4 to K5 is about $100 (here we can only display the price in JPY), which would be the price for the application (sampler) if sold separately.
Hmm.....not bad, actually 

the only other samplers in this class are mach 5 and halion. kontakts price of 399 is very competitive.

Jlien, Thanks.  I did not mean to imply that the Kontakt library was anything less than top professional quality.  You are right that it is very good.

Since I use mainly use organic instruments right now and already have a number of libraries covering guitar (elec and acoustic), bass, piano, drums, and orchestra, there was nothing there that filled a major gap for me.  I do use the Kontakt instruments on a regular basis, though, and I really like them.  If someone had nothing but the Kontakt library and a vocal mic, he or she could make great records. 

I would like to see them do more in the acoustic guitar area, but with RealGuitar2 and Acoustic Legends, I am pretty well covered.  The Kontakt strumming approach is unique, however, and I am going to play with it a bit.

Magix Independence Pro is a pretty powerful Sampler.
The free version gives you 2 gigs of sounds to try out. [and worth trying imo]
Won't help with Kontakt files.

There is the also a paid for 12 gig [basic version] library
and the full Pro library about 70 gigs.

http://pro.magix.com/en/independence/independence-free.1013.html


Garry

The requirements are the following:

Full version of Kontakt SAMPLER 4+ required. Will only run on the Kontakt PLAYER for 30 minutes in demo mode.*

I wouldn't put a lot of stock in the free Bolder Sound stuff working correctly even if you buy the full version of Kontakt. Some of the free products seem to be very sensitive to what version of Kontakt you are using. I downloaded one of their free products and tried without success to get it to work under Kontakt 5. I sent an email to support describing the problem... The response was basically (paraphrased): "Well kid, them's the breaks with free samples".

Magix Independence Pro is a pretty powerful Sampler. The free version gives you 2 gigs of sounds to try out. Won't help with Kontakt files, but quite a lot of very good libraries available. http://pro.magix.com/en/i...endence-free.1013.html

 
Thanks for the heads-up, Garry.   I tried Independence Free a few years ago when it was still Yellow, but it didn't really do much for me.   However, it looks like things may have changed for the better over the last few years, so I'm downloading the free version as a write this... all 2GB+ worth.  
 

If the sample files are in WAV format and you were a dab hand at creating SFZ files you may get somewhere, however if the samples are compressed in to the NCW format you are out of luck. I just checked the Bolder sounds stuff on my drive and its all NCW, however that may have happened If resaved and compressed the samples, something I normally do to save disk space and load times.

Of course converting from one sample format to another is not straight forward, particularly products written for Kontakt which has extensive scripting. Even with a sample converter program like Chicken Systems unless its a very simple Kontakt instrument you are going to loose a lot.

Gents,
Time flies momentary and I need a bit ,tomorrow or saturday 
I´m back here.

konradh


Jlien, Thanks.  I did not mean to imply that the Kontakt library was anything less than top professional quality.  You are right that it is very good.

Since I use mainly use organic instruments right now and already have a number of libraries covering guitar (elec and acoustic), bass, piano, drums, and orchestra, there was nothing there that filled a major gap for me.  I do use the Kontakt instruments on a regular basis, though, and I really like them.  If someone had nothing but the Kontakt library and a vocal mic, he or she could make great records. 

I agree. Basses, pianos, drums, etc. in Kontakt are a bit weak (guitars are unusable IMO) but overall Kontakt is still the best or one of the best romplers out there (I admit I haven't tried Halion Sonic). I've learned that the more high-end libraries you get, the less time you'll have for creating music, because it takes longer to load samples () and there are more parameters you have to deal with. In fact, these days I kind of think it only takes Kontakt, VI.One (this has better drums, basses and pianos), Nexus (for electronic music), a good pick bass library and maybe EZDrummer (although I don't have it) to make fairly good demos.

Thanks to whomever above in the Thread. I too have investigated & downloaded the Independence free synth. Er, this is not bad at all, in fact I've purchased some add-on discs. Deffo worth a tickle. Thank you.