All I've ever heard is people saying that they are dull samples. Does anyone actually like them?

Anyone think they are comparable to Sonic Synth in quality? I've never heard them, just wondering if you pretty much only get Kontakt when you buy Kontakt, or if you actually get useable sounds too.

The samples included with Kontakt themselves are good, it's just you expect more variety from a 3gb library. How many FM piano samples do people need? There are so many good VSTis out there, why waste so much space?

Beyond that it's worth getting because it does things with sound that nothing else can currently. Design wise it's very flexible as well.

You really can't compare to Sonic Synth as it is a comprehensive library of sounds that are tied to a sample playback engine with minimal programming and some effects programming.

They sound great and are great value but comparing samples in this case doesn't do justice to Kontakt's capabilities.

You shouldn't consider Kontakt if you are looking for something like Sonic Synth. Kontakt is meant to be a very flexible sampler, with several different sampling algorithms.

The Sounds that come with it are good, not comparable to Sonic Synth (at least, not as varied). The samples seem to be meant to showcase Kontakts capabilities rather than provide a variation.

Good news, is that it imports Giga, Akai and Soundfonts.

Kontakt's piano is OK and some people like the guitar samples. The rest - IMHO - are utter garbage that NI should be ashamed of supplying. I think some staffer just spent an afternoon sampling some of their other softsynths.

And although the banner ad on this site proudly announces it "supports all standard formats", that is WRONG. Just take a look on the NI forums (and elsewhere) to see the terrible and ongoing problems users report with gigasampler and akai format disks.

I use it as a mangler and to very quickly create huge sample banks of wavs accross the keyboard. It performs both jobs superbly well.

I almost never use Kontakt. One trip thorught the included samples was very disheartening. With SonicSynth, Battery, GigaPiano and some of the NI synths the Kontakt library was almost useless for me. For the size of some of the samples they should have sounded better. Importing GigaSamples is useless without disk streaming. I am looking forward to Sonic Station and am hoping it will breath some life into Kontakt. Not just for the natural sounds, but as a basis for building bigger sounds.

Robert

The definition of "usable sound" depends on the kind of music you do, your musical background, and your working style. The strength of Kontakt's library is acoustic instruments. If you're a kind of person who gets inspired by patches made by sound designers, Kontakt's lib doesn't have such sound. On the other hand, if you have a strong opinion about how acoustic instruments should sound, Kontakt's tweakability will enable you to create good acoustic instruments. You should consider Kontakt's lib's sounds as raw materials.

I own both Sonic Synth and Kontakt. In my subjective opinion, Sonic Synth excels in synthetic sounding instruments, and Kontakt's lib is good at realistic acoustic instruments.

But after all, Kontakt is not a sample player but is a sound design tool. It would be wrong to assume that Kontakt's library will fulfill your needs.

I also own Sonic Synth and Kontakt and knew going in that Kontatk's library wasn't going to be all that interesting. And it lived up to my expectations.

I use it to create my own timbres and wouldn't bother with giga samples because of the streaming issue. The Akai samples I have import without a glitch so I'm probably fortunate.

It comes down to which is more important, having a device to manipulate and arrange samples or a device that has lots of great sounding patches out of the box. Sonic Synth has lots of great sounding patches and like other I look forward to Sonic Station as the programmer in me wants to play with some of the very good samples in it.

Personally I don't see much use for Kontakt if you aren't creating. It does the mundane things a sampler does easily but it's the manipulation of samples that makes it worth looking into.

It certainly doesn't diminish Kontakt for its superb abilities. I need the library at this point more than the tweakability, so I know what direction I'll take.

What Native Instruments needs to do is provide the option of having Sonic Station come with Kontakt instead of the current library.

I'll be getting a couple of other NI synths under the Christmas tree, so I think I'll be looking to Sonic Synth next unless they make a Kontakt/Sonic Station bundle really fast.

Thanks for all of the input! More is welcome.

i like the nylon string guitar and the fretless bass, thats it.

I would love to see NI or some sample company come out with a CD of Kontackt samples designed for mangling and tweaking. Kontakt does not shine when playing a 200 Meg piano or large drum sets. Giga does piano's better, Battery does drums better, and 200 Meg is two large or a sample you want to mangle. Pianos, basses and acoustic guitars are not that interesting when you start tweaking the sounds. Give use some decent orchestra and choir samples with good loop points and a rich sound that works well with heavy processing. Sound effects like rain, thunder, animals that can be turned into semi-musical instruments or percussion maps. There are lots of interesting possibilities for Kontakt, but they never came in the box with the program.

This is not really the fault of Yellow Tools. Kontakt is not going to compete with GigaSampler on natural instruments. It is not going to compete with Sonic Synth. Just as those instruments cannot compete with Kontakt in certain areas.

Robert

i find most of the sample cd useless. but kontact itself is damn good.