KVR Audio

oddbods finger · Post by **oddbods finger** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 5:10 pm

Yes, sorry...it's a 'which sampler' question.

I'm trying to figure out what to get.

My emphasis would be for -
good solo brass instruments
a decent acoustic piano
good strings (solo and ensemble)
some nice acoustic drum kits wouldn't go amiss either

So generally leaning towards acoustic instruments.
i'm not really bothered about synth stuff or any guitars.

Is there much to distinguish between the big name samplers?
Halion 3, Kontact 2, Sampletank 2XL...

Is there something else I should consider?

(I've been looking at Miroslav Philharmonik too)

mahtazz · Post by **mahtazz** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 5:34 pm

VSampler?

Improv · Post by **Improv** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 6:19 pm

oddbods finger wrote:Yes, sorry...it's a 'which sampler' question.

I'm trying to figure out what to get.

My emphasis would be for -
good solo brass instruments
a decent acoustic piano
good strings (solo and ensemble)
some nice acoustic drum kits wouldn't go amiss either

So generally leaning towards acoustic instruments.
i'm not really bothered about synth stuff or any guitars.

Is there much to distinguish between the big name samplers?
Halion 3, Kontact 2, Sampletank 2XL...

Is there something else I should consider?

(I've been looking at Miroslav Philharmonik too)

Best way might be to work backwards from what you want to do. Have a look at
www.soundsonline.com and other sample cd sites and look for what you want. Note what formats the cds are made for.

Note that there are sample converters that convert from one format to the other with varying degrees of success: Extreme Sample Converter, Awave, Chicken Systems Translator,etc.

Sidhu · Post by **Sidhu** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:17 pm

mahtazz wrote:VSampler?

Comes with samples ? I dint know... could not get my head around the Vsampler demo though.. every time i would save the session, Vsampler would like take time to save it's loaded banks first.. and god forbid if you had the mastero grand loaded.

Sidhu

kovacs · Post by **kovacs** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:23 pm

Oddbods, do you generally need a sampler or a sample player? Kontakt is nice but overly expensive if all you need is a sample player. SampleTank 2 with some of esoundz' sound capsules might be what you need (I wonder if some of those sound capsules also come with SampleTank LE which would get you started).

I have both and also Kompakt, which is NI's sample player - it has an extremely good sample collection "in the box" at a very decent price. Only problem is it seems NI is eol-ing Kompakt.

Just my 2c,
Kovacs

Sidhu · Post by **Sidhu** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:26 pm

I personally think i'll go in for halion player when I canget someone to get it from the west (we dont get it locally). It ships with the full halion lib.

Later buy the limited version chicken translator or something. It converts all formats to any one chosen format, and it's cheap.

http://www.samash.com/catalog/showitem.asp?itemid=43827

http://www.chickensys.com/products/tran ... halion.php

Regards,
Sidhu

zai · Post by **zai** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:34 pm

I'd go with Kontakt, you can do A LOT with it. SampleTank 2 is good with lots of sounds, but not as much flexibility as Kontakt. And yes, you can always go with Kompakt (but it's based on Kontakt 1's engin). Download the demo and try it out and see if it's for you. It does come with a bunch of sounds, just not as much as ST2.

I'd stay away from Halion...personally, I've tried it and it took me a while to figure out how to play around with samples...and by then, I have already given up!

Zai

Sidhu · Post by **Sidhu** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:37 pm

kovacs wrote:Oddbods, do you generally need a sampler or a sample player? Kontakt is nice but overly expensive if all you need is a sample player. SampleTank 2 with some of esoundz' sound capsules might be what you need (
Kovacs

from what i know, Sampletank is more of a Rompler, such that it preloads samples directly into the ram and plays it off them. No disk streaming. Now, unless you are beefed up on ram, i might not like this proposition. Second. Sampletank cannot read most other formats. many top notch libs. come in Giga or Halion format. You would still then need to buy a translator (extreme is cheap and has full ST compatibility).

I still think Halion player is a real great deal for 99USD. It lacks import of all orhter format but Halion, which i do not consider a big issue, most libs. come in Halion mappings. And then there is Chicken translator.

Sidhu

edit : I think halion is rather easy to figure out...

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:37 pm

Kontakt is extremely full-featured & comes with a high quality library of all the sounds you're looking for. Unfortunately, it's also buggy, takes a long time to load large programs, & crashes (at least for me) when more than 20 notes polyphony are used.

Sampletank 2 is extremely stable, loads programs quickly, & is easy to work with. Unfortunately, although it comes with all the sounds you're looking for, they're not as good as what you get with Kontakt.

I can't comment on Halion since I don't use it. I do know that it's supposed to load programs much faster than Kontakt does, even on the same libraries.

Sidhu · Post by **Sidhu** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:39 pm

Hey Eric! houz you doing? nice seeing you after a long time!

sidhu

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:57 pm

Big up, Sidhu!

sidhu wrote:Sampletank is more of a Rompler, such that it preloads samples directly into the ram and plays it off them. No disk streaming. Now, unless you are beefed up on ram, i might not like this proposition.

Doesn't that whole 'stretch' algorithm pretty much mean the programs are small, anyway? I've always assumed the programs contained relatively few samples compared to these Giga-style libraries where every single key & velocity of an instrument are sampled. For example, check out how small the HQ piano download is, less than 20mb if my memory serves me, & that's supposed to be the big one! The Giga Boesendorfer take up two cd-roms.

Small programs aren't necessarily bad, either. As I mentioned, Sampletank loads its programs extremely fast & is extremely stable, most likely because the programs aren't these massive memory killers like the ones that keep crashing Kontakt for me. Plugsound also has small programs yet sounds great (better than Sampletank, IMO).

bugs · Post by **bugs** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:00 am

SampleTank is a ROMpler, not a sampler and not a particularly good one either.

Sidhu · Post by **Sidhu** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:09 am

Uncle E wrote: Doesn't that whole 'stretch' algorithm pretty much mean the programs are small, anyway? I've always assumed the programs contained relatively few samples compared to these Giga-style libraries where every single key & velocity of an instrument are sampled. For example, check out how small the HQ piano download is, less than 20mb if my memory serves me, & that's supposed to be the big one! The Giga Boesendorfer take up two cd-roms.

Small programs aren't necessarily bad, either. As I mentioned, Sampletank loads its programs extremely fast & is extremely stable, most likely because the programs aren't these massive memory killers like the ones that keep crashing Kontakt for me. Plugsound also has small programs yet sounds great (better than Sampletank, IMO).

Small programms can alwaz be good, streching a sigle sample over a certain keymap area can often (and does) yeild better results than multilayered, massive content instruments. But this is surely due the poor quality of the big instruments. Any very serious sample library will be comparitively much larger, and much better sounding. Sample streching shows. and this is where sampletank looses out.

As a simple sample player, Kontact or even Halion is overkill. Sampletank fills this gap very well, but it lacks the ability to playback Big professional sample libraries. Partly beccause of lack of import, and partly because of lack of disk streaming.

The Halion player, I feel, covers this segment very well. It is stable, loads libraries very fast, and (i think) is pretty straight forward. you are restricted to only the Halion format, but that is a non issue. then it's only 99 dollars.

Sidhu

p.s how come Halion player is not listed on JRR ?

kovacs · Post by **kovacs** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:11 am

Uncle E wrote:As I mentioned, Sampletank loads its programs extremely fast & is extremely stable, most likely because the programs aren't these massive memory killers like the ones that keep crashing Kontakt for me.

Eric, funny that you're saying this because I was just about to post that I am having severe problems with SampleTank 2 XL loading *extremely* slow. When I open a set in Ableton Live 5 that contains ST2XL it takes forever to load.

And today I've had frequent crashes with ST2XL.

I have 2 gigs of RAM so it's not a RAM issue.

oddbods finger · Post by **oddbods finger** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 6:17 am

Thanks for the replies

kovacs wrote:Oddbods, do you generally need a sampler or a sample player?

I think I probably need just a sample player (rompler).
it's good acoustic instruments 'out of the box' I'm after....so editing presets isn't important

kovacs wrote: Only problem is it seems NI is eol-ing Kompakt.

eol-ing ?

I guess what I'm after is reasonable quality over quantity (without getting into crazy money - ).
I guess I'm trying not to push the budget too much above $500/£300.

Buying something like Kontact I'm getting a load of sounds I don't necessarily need...(EPs, Organs, Guitars, Synths, etc)

However, buying specialist libraries with say Halion Player might end up more expensive than getting something like Miroslav Philharmonik.
Although you can't expand with Philharmonik.

I'll check out a few specialist libraries.

mmm...actually Halion Player for only £70 seems like a no-brainer....could also pick up Philharmonik and be under budget...
or GPO?...missed out on that recent Group Buy didn't I.

Halion/Kontakt/Sampletank/Other...?