I see/hear a couple of real nice instruments using this ENGINE 2 player...

Does anyone have any opinions? Good/bad/performance/usability/copy protection?

All info appreciated!

Mac or PC? that makes all the difference

If mac, it's unstable at present... cpu spikes (well acknowledged in their forum here) and crashes with multi core enabled, when simply occasionally choosing a preset.

LOVE the interface, and the libraries i have for it are insanely good (forest 1, medeival, k size, titan, synthwerk)

Probably some of the highest quality samples stuff i have in my arsenal.

But engine itself, on MAC, is flakey.. they are aware and i compiled all the crash reports for them etc and they are working on it, they are committed to it

workaround for now.. try not to use elastic and disable engine's own multiprocessor (use your hosts) and it's "usable" in mac

Windows is meant to be MUCH better

I am still a huge fan cause the libraries are just amazing

Engine 2 runs well on my i7 64bit PC. I do get some spits and crackles every now and then and it's nowhere near as efficient on resources as Kontakt 5, but it wouldn't stop me from buying Engine based libraries. I already own Forest Kingdom, Epic World, Era and Galaxy X. I use Galaxy X a lot and it doesn't cause me problems. The others are great too, but they just don't fit into what I do as often as Galaxy X has lately.

You can download some limited demos to try it out. Though I understand that you only really know how well something's going to work for you once you start using it in projects, it'll still give you an idea if it's a total bust or not.

Good know these mac problems btw now i hope they solve them becouse i really like Forest Kingdom 2 based audiodemos and product sample...

Hi JPQ you have the same mac issues?

I dont have full products and with demos i think i dont get yet any problems but i tested this stuff only very quickly. But now i test for you.I get cpu spikes with Logic 9.1.5 and OS 10.7.5. and processor is i5 2.5ghz and 8gigabytes of memory. Machine is mac mini middle 2011. btw i get cpu spikes with some other plugins sometimes even Logic own.

Yeah...judging by the free version, it seems that more than just a hi-end ROMpler Galaxy X is also a great sound design tool on an uncharted terriitory, especially for an instrument !

Unlike any other sample libraries AFAIK...



BTW good to know the instability issues for the mac version of engine !

I use it regularly on Win 7 x64, and have no real problems to speak of.

I have Desert Winds, Epic World, Era: Medieval Legends, and Forest Kingdom II.

Sure it is NOT as slick as Kontakt, but it is not a crashy, bug-fest either.

I'm sure that they will improve it with time, and there have already been several updates issued in the small amount of time since its initial release.

This demonstrates to me that they are commited to improving things and creating a solid platform for their libraries.

I wish that all of Tari's libraries had been released in Kontakt format instead, but for me using the ENGINE player is a small price to pay for some of the most beautiful sample libraries available today.

As it uses scripted GUI I think it is natural to compare it with Kontakt.

Engine has lots going for it, unlike Kontakt Player it doesn't shut down after 15 minutes of usage.

And one can also save and load multipatches, something Kontakt Player doesn't allow for.

Engine can also load the Independence Free library ytif files, so with that plus all the Best Service free libraries, I think I have managed to gather almost 10GB of content for zilch.

As such I think it is one of the best "freeware" romplers out there

+1

Actually, Engine does not have scripting built into it per se in the way Kontakt does. It only has a customizable performance page that's done via XML and custom graphics. That's a far cry from scripting. Also, it has built in legato feature so you don't need to script it (but you have to sample things properly for this to work, of course - and this is what Tari is doing).

It's a completely different animal. I must say I very much dislike the tiny hard to read font they're using throughout the interface. And having circular mode on knobs in 2013 is bloody ridiculous (there's also no way to change it, you can only drag the value fields up-down, but this isn't as precise as one might think).

OK, let's call it customizable GUI then

UVI player, is that like Engine, or is that more like Kontakt scripted GUI?

On PC there is also one big bug concerning Elastique mode. Elastique mode is some kind of time stretching algo, to have sounds play at song tempo. Sadly right now it causes cpu spikes, pops n crackles galore. But they said they would fix this with Engine 3.

Honestly, as a new buyer i would wait to see wheter E3 has this fixed.

UVI Workstation/MachFive 3 is more like Kontakt, it has Lua scripting built in.

Wow, thanks to all for the VERY informative responses!!!

I'm on Windows (Win7 64-bit) and was looking at both Desert Winds and Forest Kingdom, to compliment Alchemy. Minor rare/random glitches in realtime playback will be annoying but as long as a final non-realtime render from my host (Tracktion 4) is clean, I'll deal with it to get the sounds I want.

I didn't know about the free versions, just looked 'em up - going to get them today and try it out tonight - thanks for mentioning it!