KVR Audio

maxhodges1 · Post by **maxhodges1** » Fri May 18, 2007 9:48 pm

I'm thinking to get Ableton Live and trying to decide if I should get Sampler with it. I don't own any real sampler at all. How do you think Ableton Sampler compares to Kontakt? Sampler seems very cool and intuitive. Too bad it doesn't work outside of Live (so I could use it from Sonar too.)

music style: electronica, IDM, chill beats

Max
soft: Sonar 6 Producer, WaveLab, GURU, Rapture, Lucifer, WinXP
hard: Edirol PCR-800, M-Audio Axiom 25, NI Audio Kontrol 1, Dell Precision Workstation (P4 3.0 Ghz, 2.5 GB RAM)

steff3 · Post by **steff3** » Fri May 18, 2007 10:10 pm

Well, for intuitive sample-works Ableton+Sampler is great. It has quite some unique features and I think it is pretty optimized (at least on Mac).

Kontakt is great for big libraries, complex libraries with scripting and so on - but for hands-on Sampler beats Kontakt IMO...... The one thing I do not like about Sampler is its mapping window - it is huge, but I do not like that design (ala ex, NNxT, etc.)

hope that helps

best

maxhodges1 · Post by **maxhodges1** » Fri May 18, 2007 10:24 pm

when you say "big libraries" do you mean collections of lots of sounds or big multi-sample "patches" or something? sorry, and I wrote I don't have any sampler now (unless Wavelab counts)... so I'm not too familiar with samplers. I'm not looking for any big orchestral collections, just good sound and good control for sound designing.

Cheers!

mellotronaut · Post by **mellotronaut** » Fri May 18, 2007 10:30 pm

Kontakt 2 is a Mercedes Benz (but not as stable) and Sampler is a Ferrari.

maxhodges1 · Post by **maxhodges1** » Fri May 18, 2007 10:32 pm

sorry, i'm bad with car analogies. never owned a Benz or Ferrari... but I'm sure they are both good cars.

mellotronaut · Post by **mellotronaut** » Fri May 18, 2007 10:36 pm

Kontakt needs some time to be loved and gives you room for your whole loopysamply family, Sampler looks good, drives fast, gives less room and you'll love it instantly.

dougsyo · Post by **dougsyo** » Fri May 18, 2007 10:50 pm

I use K2. If you're looking for third-party support, Kontakt is king - but it is complex and needs lots of resources.

If you're going to make your own samples or your vendor supports Sampler format (or someone like EXSC begins to support it), it appears (I don't have first-hand experience) easier to use.

Doug

justin3am · Post by **justin3am** » Fri May 18, 2007 10:58 pm

Sampler is very easy to get into and has tons of easily accesible features for twisting and manipulating sounds. Kontakt is very robust and desinged to handle huge sample sets. You can do almost anything in Kontakt that you can with Sampler but it's semi modular layout can make it more confusing for someone that isn't used to it's work flow. Based on what you say you want I would suggest Sampler just because it's much easier to get trippy sounds from it out of the box.

I wrote a tutorial that goes into manipulating loops with Sampler if you are interested.

http://www.3amnoise.net/blog/

[EDIT] You can also import Kontak banks into Sampler , as well as Akai sample CDs and other formats.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Fri May 18, 2007 11:07 pm

If you are into "creative sampling" (or are interested in that) you should probably also give Shortcircuit a try. There's a fully functional 2-voice polyphony demo.
As has been said, Kontakt is a huge monster, and it's defenitely *the* flagship among softsamplers when it comes to building more or less realistic instrument libraries, but it's certainly not a "lightweight". It's functionalities and options are very, very deep and it certainly can get confusing if you're new to sampling, but otoh, there's almost nothing it can't do. It's got sample tweaking and modulation options galore, something which might get over your head or might just be what you want. In addition, it's got quite a bag full of onboard FX which can be embedded in your patch, plus, as has been said as well, it reads just about any sample patch format there is more or less well.
Bottomline: If you need a sampler which does just about everything a sampler can do, Kontakt might be the way to go, with the downside of being very complex and sometimes unintuitive (and partially not as stable as one would wish, something quite inherent to a lot of complexed software), if you need something to work with very quickly, Sampler or Shortcircuit, even if sort of limited, may be a better choice.

steff3 · Post by **steff3** » Sat May 19, 2007 8:39 am

justin3am wrote: You can do almost anything in Kontakt that you can with Sampler

I would not say that - morphing filters (ok, that you can achieve with multiple filters in Kontakt, but a lot of work - and personally I find the Kontakt filters unintuitive as nothing else in music software market.
AM and FM on samples - cannot really be done. Also the modulation of loop points etc. in Kontakt is not as easy and flexible me thinks

>>
when you say "big libraries" do you mean collections of lots of sounds or big multi-sample "patches" or something
>>
Well, big libraries - East West, VSL, Sonivox, Garritan, Scarbee, etc. - collection of samples and patches

hope that helps

best

maxhodges1 · Post by **maxhodges1** » Sat May 19, 2007 9:42 am

thanks a lot! all the information provided has been helpful.

loachm · Post by **loachm** » Sat May 19, 2007 12:06 pm

...there is one thing that keeps me off using Kontakt (THE sampler to rule them all btw.) in Ableton Live - Live's handling of multi-timbral VSTis with multiple outputs. As flexible as Live's channel rouing can be - it's a real drag when using it with Kontakt. You'd have to set up midi channels for the each Kontakt instrument (that's obvious) as well as dedicated audio channels for the different outputs of Kontakt (that's annoying). Let's say you'd use a multi with four instruments, which all use different outputs, then you'd have to set up eight tracks (4x midi, 4x audio in Live). This way it gets really messy, soon. Also, Live's freezing doesn't work with multi-timbral VSTis - with Kontakt's vast sound-designing capabilities you wouldn't want to miss that! I'd say, get Sampler - it's perfectly designed for Live's workflow. But if you want to have the sampler of all samplers, cross your fingers and pray that Ableton will improve Live's handling for such VSTis in the next version that should be available in a few months...

...btw. simple stuff can also be achieved in a simple way in Kontakt - just because it can be complex, it doesn't mean it's complicated at all...

Kye · Post by **Kye** » Mon May 21, 2007 11:52 am

hi can i jus ask a quick question here..
i heard someone mention loop point modulation in Sampler... can this be done?

Can I automate/modulate my sample start point? i always thought i couldnt do this, which frustrated me..

trip_out · Post by **trip_out** » Mon May 21, 2007 12:01 pm

Yes, I pretty sure I've seen this in the Sampler video on the Ableton website. Check it out.

vacuvox · Post by **vacuvox** » Mon May 21, 2007 9:57 pm

Yep - Sampler can modulate the sample offset, loop start and loop length using LFOs or various MIDI controls including velocity, key, mod wheel, pitch bend etc. Easy as pie and very cool - use it alla dee time! vax

how does Ableton Sampler compare to Kontakt?