bigcat Saxophone Collection finished

Sampler and Sampling discussion (techniques, tips and tricks, etc.)
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Well I'm done with this for better or worse. I like saxophones, but they don't quite have the overall appeal of pianos and I didn't sample any of them myself, so rather at the mercy of public domain / CC samples. Candidly nothing here sounds as good as the City Piano, but the University of Iowa Alto and Soprano Saxes sound the best. They are quite warm and blend well. I prefer them to other freebies / basic K5 saxes which sound synthetic to me, like they are trying to hard. I think I hear the reed. Small footprint, good for mockups or sitting back in a mix.
The Club Saxes are from samples by Clruwe at Freesound.org. They are more free form and fun, but have their own definition of that pesky phrase 'in tune'. Check out the Tenor Sax for many trills, drops, slurs, etc... Finally there is the MSLP Sax with 6 styles from that very interesting and eclectic library of samples. Toys or maybe a totally different sound if you can swing it.
The Iowa Saxes are available for Kontact 5, VSTi and Sampletank. The Club and MSLP Saxes are for K5 only.

bigcat Instruments: bigcat Saxophone Collection
Last edited by bigcat1969 on Fri Mar 28, 2014 3:10 am, edited 10 times in total.
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Somehow managed to miss the Iowa Alto Sax an hour ago, but gave the other two a quick whirl. Now I download Iowa, my version of Kontakt is too old. So get back to you tomorrow after update.

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Thanks so much. I seem to be the only person on the planet who somehow got updated to 5.3.1. Usually I'm the last person to even know there is an update. Serves me right for running service center.

Also after you update, if you happen to randomly download http://www.mediafire.com/download/u47ph ... _banjo.zip and then the Philharmonia Orchestra Banjo samples, http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/explore/make_music/banjo . Convert the samples to wave from mp3 and happen to put those waves in the harm banjo Sample directory, well who knows what Banjo-like sounds might result. Certainly I don't know and I'd never distribute the samples or create a sampler-like instrument using K5 myself. Heaven for fend.
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I've upgraded to 5.3.1, and I can confirm that all kind of banjo-like sounds suddenly emerged from my speakers. I'm not really sure how that happened, yet it did. Thanks for divining this.

The sax works fine. Dry, good definition, easy key switches (there is an unmapped B0, though), useful controls. It does lack some mod wheel control, IMO. But at least I understand how this sound came to emerge from my speakers. Thanks for the work you've put into this.

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Thanks FLWrd. I hadn't thought about the mod wheel I must admit, I should try to work that in somehow.

I notice they are looking for a high acoustic quality guitar in another thread, this doesn't quality but its fun
http://www.mediafire.com/download/l6703 ... guitar.zip
Do the same thing as the banjo but with the guitar samples.
http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/explore/make_music/guitar
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The guitar feels ok for some work, but it's not a guitar for all occasions. The notes sound long, almost harp like, and some have some vibrato or pitch change. Single note lines and arpeggios are ok, but chord changes are a bit odd. The samples are not perfect: the C and F below central C seems to lag a bit (indeed, it shows in the wave editor), and the C doesn't seem truly an octave lower. If you play them simultaneously, you can hear a the detune. This patch might need a bit more work.

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Are the little green start lines right before each sample in the wave editor? I thought Kontakt would remember that information and start the samples right away. If not I guess this idea won't work sadly as I can't edit the wave files and release them, its part of the Philharmonic's terms of use.
Try reducing the release sample time to see if that helps make it less harp-like.
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Bumped for initial release of K5 instruments.
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Bump for request for help testing VSTis.
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bigcat1969 wrote:Bump for request for help testing VSTis.
I've had very limited success in loading these in the latest version of Kontakt. It takes a couple of minutes to either load or crash my DAW. After a successful load, the sound sometimes is very distorted.

I finally got the alto sax to load - very good sound, although I discovered a mis-mapping at D4, low velocity (it plays a D# instead).

Maybe it (the loading issue) is something with my setup, but the problem is unique to these four .nki files.

BTW, I downloaded these this morning.
"Sometimes I think of Abraham...
How one star he saw had been lit for me"

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Hum let me see if I can figure out what was in those nkis that would cause those crashes. Sorry to have caused those problems for you. Thanks for the info on the mismapping.

I put up no interface versions. The script creating problems was the first thing I thought of so it and the picture are gone in these versions. Could you give one of them a try and let me know if that helped the situation at all?
Here's a link to the Alto.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dqlri ... erface.nki

Also fixed the mismap. Thanks for that info.
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bigcat1969 wrote:Hum let me see if I can figure out what was in those nkis that would cause those crashes. Sorry to have caused those problems for you. Thanks for the info on the mismapping.

I put up no interface versions. The script creating problems was the first thing I thought of so it and the picture are gone in these versions. Could you give one of them a try and let me know if that helped the situation at all?
Here's a link to the Alto.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dqlri ... erface.nki

Also fixed the mismap. Thanks for that info.
I tried the new one from your link. No crashes but it still takes forever to load. After dropping the .nki file on the Kontakt gui, I wait for about a minute before the Progress window shows, then another minute while the progress bar goes from zero to complete.

Once it's loaded, it sounds good!

Other monolithic 3rd party .nki's of comparable size load nearly instantaneously.
"Sometimes I think of Abraham...
How one star he saw had been lit for me"

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Thanks for retrying it. Sorry it still isn't working correctly.
I've posted a thread on the Native Instruments support forum asking for advice as I don't know how to solve this problem.
Does anyone else have any ideas what could be going wrong here?
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Alright the Mighty Evil Dragon said don't do the monolith thing, so here is a non-monolith version.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/af63n ... ace_PS.zip
Thanks SWTrex for helping me solve this problem. If we can get it sorted, it will be good to know for the future.
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bigcat1969 wrote:Alright the Mighty Evil Dragon said don't do the monolith thing, so here is a non-monolith version.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/af63n ... ace_PS.zip
Thanks SWTrex for helping me solve this problem. If we can get it sorted, it will be good to know for the future.
Works like a charm :tu:
"Sometimes I think of Abraham...
How one star he saw had been lit for me"

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