I guess Kontakt is the only way...

[Numanoid]

'Bloat' has more to do with,
"We're putting it in the package, whether you want it or not."
And 98% of the supplied Kontakt sounds have proven themself nice for what they are, but completely useless for me.

+1 Would be great if NI could sell Kontakt and the Kontakt lib separatly, then one maybe also could buy Kontakt as a download, instead of having to go to a music shop or having it shipped.

[loachm]

What I just really like is to combine all kinds of synthesis forms within one single patch, it's not the either/or-aspect but layering a multisampled instrument with several velocity zones and round robin with a synth in the lower half of the keyboard, maybe the same sample map reversed in granular mode with real time-control over sample speed and grain randomization, another synth for the high register and maybe a FM synth only for the highest velocity layers just opens totally new doors for sound designing. Add a cool script on top with lot's of controls and you have something very musical and customizable.

...are you, like me, also regretting that Kore has been discontinued before reaching its full potential? What you described reminds me a lot of the wonderful Kore Soundpacks Jeremiah Savage has created. But I know what you mean and Mach Five really seems to be an interesting product. However, for me regarding layering and splitting and makro controls Live's instrument and effect racks do a pretty fine job in that area. And I'm thinking about either M4L or watching what Bitwig Studio will bring. And I have high hopes for Reaktor 6. But back on topic: its popularity probably doesn't come from Kontakt alone. If you take into account what other instruments Komplete is offering and what you can do with the other NI instruments and a modern modular DAW you pretty much have something Mach Five or HALion have a hard time to compete with. Otherwise they would have a bigger market share (I just looked at the results here http://www.kvraudio.com/news/kvr-audio- ... 3986/3/421) or I'm mistaken and they have just started to compete with it. However, if I would have to decide between Kontakt and Mach Five I would go for Komplete which is the best value for money between those two And that's probably why Kontakt (and NI all along) have their position in the market.

[SampleScience]

But NI has been in the forefront of releasing huge loads of bloat and Kontakt libraries tend to be right up there. .

Could people stop using the word 'bloat' to mean 'stuff I dont want myself, even though other people actually do'

'Bloat' has more to do with,
"We're putting it in the package, whether you want it or not."
And 98% of the supplied Kontakt sounds have proven themself nice for what they are, but completely useless for me.

A 100$ price tag for Kontakt alone without the library would be cool. That being said, I'm not a fan of this software anyways and barely use it. I'm thinking about selling it if that's possible...

[Sampleconstruct]

What I just really like is to combine all kinds of synthesis forms within one single patch, it's not the either/or-aspect but layering a multisampled instrument with several velocity zones and round robin with a synth in the lower half of the keyboard, maybe the same sample map reversed in granular mode with real time-control over sample speed and grain randomization, another synth for the high register and maybe a FM synth only for the highest velocity layers just opens totally new doors for sound designing. Add a cool script on top with lot's of controls and you have something very musical and customizable.

...are you, like me, also regretting that Kore has been discontinued before reaching its full potential? What you described reminds me a lot of the wonderful Kore Soundpacks Jeremiah Savage has created. But I know what you mean and Mach Five really seems to be an interesting product. However, for me regarding layering and splitting and makro controls Live's instrument and effect racks do a pretty fine job in that area. And I'm thinking about either M4L or watching what Bitwig Studio will bring. And I have high hopes for Reaktor 6. But back on topic: its popularity probably doesn't come from Kontakt alone. If you take into account what other instruments Komplete is offering and what you can do with the other NI instruments and a modern modular DAW you pretty much have something Mach Five or HALion have a hard time to compete with. Otherwise they would have a bigger market share (I just looked at the results here http://www.kvraudio.com/news/kvr-audio- ... 3986/3/421) or I'm mistaken and they have just started to compete with it. However, if I would have to decide between Kontakt and Mach Five I would go for Komplete which is the best value for money between those two And that's probably why Kontakt (and NI all along) have their position in the market.

Exactly at the point when I wanted to get into Kore it was discontinued so I never explored it. I would have been all over it for sure. From the old hardware days where I had like 5-6 keyboards on stage, controlled by 10 foot pedals and a hardware Midi merger in a 19" rack I was used to patch up synths the complicated way, but it worked fine. Then when moving to software only I patched it all up in Logic, wiring synths in the environment assigning numerous Controllers to numerous parameters per patch.
So from those days comes the urge to combine synthesis forms when creating sounds and M5 and H5 just give me that freedom in a much easier way.

I think HALion 4 was probably Steinberg's most unpopular release ever, so that burden now lies on HALion 5 and it would need some serious marketing from their side to improve it's popularity (and their overall reputation too). They have a serious product there with the best granulator currently available and a very complex sampling engine. I assume they will add scripting to H5 soon, so then new doors will open.

MOTU seem to do nothing marketing-wise for MachFive, so of course they don't have the market share M5 would deserve imo. And NI's Service Center just is a brilliant solution to activate the licenses, with all the dongle-haters around the other 2 companies are missing out on a lot of potential customers, although they have now allowed for dongle-free activation afaIk, but still tied to a single computer.

I still like NI, do a lot of betatesting for them, designed many sounds for them (Absynth and Reaktor) but never went with Komplete as I don't need all these sounds, as I've only been using my own for many years now (apart from my extended VSL libraries). But when composing music nowadays and mangling samples around, I hardly ever use any of their engines anymore as those new hybrid tools get me where I want to much quicker and with better sonic results.

[bigcat1969]

My perspective on K5 is that if you had 200 bucks to spend (my price on sale) on acoustic type instruments there is no way to acquire a more rounded set of what I might call entry level professional instruments than those included with or available free for K5.
For instance take a look at pianos, you can get over a dozen reasonable pianos out of K5,
Grand and Upright - very lightly sampled, 3 layers
Foerster - moderately sampled, 10 layers
Concert Grand - fully sampled, 10 layers
Maestro Grand converted from giga - fully sampled, 8 layer Yamaha
3 Hephaestus Pianos - lightly sampled, 3 layers
Mikhitaryan Royal Grand - moderately sampled, 3 layers
Headroom Piano plus Intimate - lightly sampled, 2 mic positions, 5 layers
Old Upright - lightly sampled, 2 layers
Petit Italien - 3 fully sampled instruments, 1 layer
Amore Grand - fully sampled, 1 layer
City Piano plus Shoot and Whisper - fully sampled, 4 layers
Full/Iowa Piano - almost fully sampled, 3 layers
Salamander - lightly sampled, 16 layers
Prepared - lightly sampled, 1 layer

My guess is you can find about half a dozen of any band / orchestral instrument and at least one of any instrument for kontakt, except oddly country instruments. When you are just starting out, this is amazing variety and of course you can purchase mid to high level instruments as you progress. Also for me, no usb based protection scheme.

[audientronic]

...MOTU seem to do nothing marketing-wise for MachFive, so of course they don't have the market share M5 would deserve imo...

It seems like motu might do better loss-leading machfive into the marketplace.
But since they license the UVI engine, that's probably not possible. The partnership with UVi is a difficult one as well, because the libraries most readily available for Machfive are also the most expensive.

[Aroused by JarJar]

I was chatting with Skeletor the other day and he was like, man, if you're using Kontakt you're never going to get that real love thing going. And I said unto Skeletor, wtf, homebones, the K-thang is the only thang these days. And he was like, yeah, they've got these big-ass libraries and all, but what happens when you do anything other than straight playback, when you apply any kind of envelope, filter or whatever? Instant plastic, my child. Yet the petite libraries of them old Akai machines are hard and erect to this day!

And I said, okay, man, I guess you know better than I do.

[Timman]

'Bloat' has more to do with,
"We're putting it in the package, whether you want it or not."
And 98% of the supplied Kontakt sounds have proven themself nice for what they are, but completely useless for me.

+1 Would be great if NI could sell Kontakt and the Kontakt lib separatly, then one maybe also could buy Kontakt as a download, instead of having to go to a music shop or having it shipped.

+1 as well. That was the only real annoying thing of Kontakt. But is indeed one of the most used plugin in my setup and was really worth the money in different occasions.

[gamecat666]

I was chatting with Skeletor the other day and he was like, man, if you're using Kontakt you're never going to get that real love thing going. And I said unto Skeletor, wtf, homebones, the K-thang is the only thang these days. And he was like, yeah, they've got these big-ass libraries and all, but what happens when you do anything other than straight playback, when you apply any kind of envelope, filter or whatever? Instant plastic, my child. Yet the petite libraries of them old Akai machines are hard and erect to this day!

And I said, okay, man, I guess you know better than I do.

made my day