Finding the Receptor not the best device for my situation...

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I think the jury is finally in and sorry to say the Receptor for all of its really good qualities is turning out to not be the solution for my needs. Mind you I have only a 2+ but the issues lie more in my uses for the Receptor than in the product itself and I want to be clear about this. My controller is an AKAI EWI4000S wind synth and controller and I am using many sample modeling instruments in Kontakt with several instances of each in order to set them up for snapshots. The continuous controller output pf the EWI and the processor intensive aspects of these instruments is overdriving the processor so that optimum resolution and latency cannot be achieved. I have had to dial down the resolution to 4800 and up the sample buffer past 128 which is about where I could run things on my old macbook. Everybody on the forums have been great at assisting me where they could but I get the impression that what I am doing is too unique in the receptor community for me to find any solutions and the problem is in the instruments I am using and not the Receptor. All is not lost as on the horizon is a device out of Europe called the Xpression Synth from Dynasample which is in ways like the Receptor but more attuned to the needs of the wind synth player. It looks like I will pass this receptor on to someone who can use it and explore this direction instead. I want to make it clear that the Receptor is as good a product as advertised and the functions I wanted for other than playability due to the aforementioned issues. worked great. A Keyboard player, Drummer or guitarist will find these units 2nd to none in quality and performance.

Dan Mackey 8)

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Is the Xpression synth currently on the market? It's difficult to tell from their website. I've learned not to hold my breath for any new VST playing technology. Just consider how long the Musebox took to actually reach the market, not to mention the "V-machine".

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to do with the Samplemodeling instruments, but I'm wondering if Kontakt instrument banks might allow you to use MIDI program change to access multiple Samplemodeling instruments from fewer instances of Kontakt and save a bit of CPU overhead.

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Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I spent many hours on forums and emails with Native Instruments pursuing your suggestion about instrument banks in Kontakt and using program change commands to select them. I was told that Kontakt does not accept that type of automation so it won't do that. The closest thing similar is putting the instruments in something like Ableton Live and using midi note commands to select them as clips which means a computer and not the receptor. The Xpression synth does not deal with VST's and has it's own combination of samples and synthesis and is more for me to advance beyond the VL70's which are no longer produced. It does exist and I will be demoing it in the next few weeks. Depending upon how this unit sounds I may end up shelving all of the sample modeling stuff until I find another solution to run them effectively. That doesn't take the receptor completely out of the picture but my budget doesn't allow both at this time. These instruments are just processor intensive by their nature and the 2+ doesn't have enough to to multiple instances (Trumpet / Sax ) etc. at the best possible resolution and I can run single instances on my macbook but lack the snapshot capability of the receptor which gives me the instant patch changes I want. I Can't afford a Pro or Pro Max right now. We'll see what happens.

Thanks again. :)

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danmack wrote:Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I spent many hours on forums and emails with Native Instruments pursuing your suggestion about instrument banks in Kontakt and using program change commands to select them. I was told that Kontakt does not accept that type of automation so it won't do that. The closest thing similar is putting the instruments in something like Ableton Live and using midi note commands to select them as clips which means a computer and not the receptor. The Xpression synth does not deal with VST's and has it's own combination of samples and synthesis and is more for me to advance beyond the VL70's which are no longer produced. It does exist and I will be demoing it in the next few weeks. Depending upon how this unit sounds I may end up shelving all of the sample modeling stuff until I find another solution to run them effectively. That doesn't take the receptor completely out of the picture but my budget doesn't allow both at this time. These instruments are just processor intensive by their nature and the 2+ doesn't have enough to to multiple instances (Trumpet / Sax ) etc. at the best possible resolution and I can run single instances on my macbook but lack the snapshot capability of the receptor which gives me the instant patch changes I want. I Can't afford a Pro or Pro Max right now. We'll see what happens.

Thanks again. :)
Admittedly, the 2+ is not super powerful, but is it safe to assume you are using the 1.9 software that improves Kontakt performance by optimizing the multi-core operation?

And given the unique capabilities of the EWI, I would be amazed if you couldn't do much more with KONTAKT than you could on ANY other synthesizer... the scripting is really amazing and can do all manner of specialized functions, but of course, you need to roll up your sleeves and dig into the programming side of things.

Please let us know what OS version you are using on your 2+, that might be the problem... I have spoken to a couple of people who use RECEPTOR with wind controllers and state there is nothing out there that can touch it...

Perhaps there is someone on the forum who is a Kontakt expert who can help you with the scripting, and be sure you are running the latest OS on your 2+.

All the best

Bryan

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Hi Bryan,
I do have the latest operating system software loaded on my Receptor 2+ which I loaded shortly after its release and made sure that the multi-core processing was appropriately checked. I'm really not sure that my issue lies strictly in Kontakt and its use as much as the sample modeling instruments operating within Kontakt. The people at sample modeling acknowledge the processor intensive nature of their products so I think therein lies the problem. There is not a lot of "under the hood" stuff that can be done with the sample modeling stuff, at least according to what I have read. I really do like the receptor and aside from running what I am doing at lower resolutions than I would like it does sound really good and functions as advertised. Right now I am considering if the Xpression does what I want, incorporating the two for my main setup as I could do the more complex layering on the Xpression and load my sample modeling instruments as single occurrences at optimum resolution and minimum latency. One other question. NI introduced a Kontakt 5 player recently which is supposed to address some of its issues of slow loading and operation. I know it seemed to do so on my imac. I asked earlier about this version coming to the receptor and I seem to get in a circle of NI telling me to ask you guys and vice-versa. Is that a possibility either now or sometime soon?

Thanks,

Dan Mackey :D

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HI Dan,

We haven't made an official installer for it, but it'll probably work if you just want to download the windows installer from NI and place the executible in drop installers here!

- Kevin

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Thanks Kevin. I will try that and see if it helps.

Dan :D

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Yee-Haaaa!!!!! Happy news in receptor land! I got the kontakt 5 player loaded and re loaded my main snapshot banks at 96000 Resolution and 128 sample rate or less and it's workin' great and loads much faster. I may have to tweak where my Mr. SaxT samples are because it wants to look for those but the trumpet loads very quickly and I haven't overloaded the processor. Thanks everyone for their suggestions and help on my issues. Looks like my 2+ is a keeper after all which is good because I really liked everything else about it.

Dan :love: :D :shock:

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