Entire Emulator II "Universe of Sounds" library coming soon for Kontakt

[the professor]

You've got some very tasty old drum machines there. Must... Resist...

Resistance is futile. Join us.... join us....!

[the professor]

UPDATE: FRIDAY 15th MAY

24-bit or 16-bit (or both)?

Okay, a bit of a decision is looming on the horizon. So far we've got over 300 patches sampled and wrapped in Kontakt, and there are maybe a couple of hundred more still to come. All of these are sampled chromatically at 24-bit, and the individual sample lengths are usually somewhere around 8 seconds, sometimes up to 20 seconds, long.

This is making the overall library size pretty big: we're estimating 20Gb to 30Gb once it's finished and compressed in Kontakt's .ncw format. It's certainly going to take a while to download

So... here's the question. Is a 24-bit file size justified when the noisefloor of the original samples is determined by the Emulator II's 12-bit companded convertors (and 8-bit file size)? Or would converting the entire library to 16-bit make more sense?

Converting would make for a smaller download (by about 33%, as you'd expect) and a smaller hard disk footprint (useful if you're trying to conserve real estate on a flash drive, for example).

A further option would be to release the library in both formats, and let the customer decide which to download. The only downside to that would be storage costs for us

We'd really like some input on this. If no-one's interested in 24-bit versions, it doesn't make much sense to supply and host them – so let us know your thoughts!

[EvilDragon]

I think you'll be fine with 16-bit. NCW also compresses better in 16-bit rather than 24-bit.

If the demand for 24-bit crops up, you always have the original samples to go back to and do a 24-bit NCW pool.

[the professor]

I think you'll be fine with 16-bit. NCW also compresses better in 16-bit rather than 24-bit.

You learn something new every day – I didn't know that! Interesting. All our other stuff is 24-bit, so I've never had the chance to compare. I'll do a little test later today and see how it works out on file sizes.

Thanks for the info, Evil

[DarkStar]

You mentioned "hundreds of patches". Is there any use of key-switching for, for example, violin articulations, instrument variations, etc?

Also, do any instruments use velocity layers or round-robins or both? If so, what are the details?

And, from the web site:

(All our Kontakt instruments require a full copy of Native Instruments Kontakt v4.2.3 or higher (including all versions of Kontakt 5). Kontakt Player is not supported: instruments will load, but will time out after 15 minutes. See the FAQ for further information.)

Is that the case for this library, too?

[EvilDragon]

DarkStar, it's an Emulator II. There were no round-robins or keyswitches back then!


And yeah, it's not gonna be a Kontakt Player library.

[DarkStar]

Understood, but I thought key-switching would be handy for selecting the different articulations, rather than load separate instruments in Kontakt.

Also, I was asking about it working in Kontakt 4.3.3 upwards

[the professor]

You mentioned "hundreds of patches". Is there any use of key-switching for, for example, violin articulations, instrument variations, etc?

Some of the original EII patches use velocity to switch between two samples – eg, to get a fingered bass sound when you play normally, and a slap bass when you hit hard. When that's the case, we're preserving it, of course.

Also, do any instruments use velocity layers or round-robins or both? If so, what are the details?

Where the original EII patch just maps velocity to amplitude, we're simply recreating that behaviour in Kontakt with a velocity-to-amp slider (you can see it on the rear panel screenshot earlier in the post). Some of the EII patches, though, map velocity to filter cutoff, and where that's the case we're taking multiple velocity samples and then creating a Kontakt AET morph between them to preserve the sound of the EII's filter opening. That way you get the real behaviour of those sounds, rather than us trying to mimic it in Kontakt.

There are no round robins. The 300+ instruments sampled so far account for over 20,000 individual sample files. We don't think it's worth doubling / trebling / quadrupling that (and the resultant library size!) just so we can put "four round robins" on our marketing The Emulator II, being a digital sampler, doesn't evince nearly so much variation between consecutive note-presses as, say, an old analogue synth; so it's really not worth it.

And, from the web site:

(All our Kontakt instruments require a full copy of Native Instruments Kontakt v4.2.3 or higher (including all versions of Kontakt 5). Kontakt Player is not supported: instruments will load, but will time out after 15 minutes. See the FAQ for further information.)

Is that the case for this library, too?

Hmm... well... basically, probably yes. At least to start with.

Here's where we are with that: Licensing Player is very costly for a small indie dev like us. Usually it doesn't make financial sense: we'd have to charge £50+ for our libraries to make it work, and you may have spotted that most of our stuff is pretty pocket-friendly So our initial thought was that this would be a Kontakt-only (ie, no Player) release.

That said, this library is (a) much much bigger than anything we've done before and (b) has huge appeal to anyone who's interested in popular music history. And we're already charging more than £50 for it, so that side of things is – possibly – covered. Basically, if there were ever a case for us licensing Player, it would be for this library.

It looks like we have three options. We're talking these through with Doug at Q Up Arts, of course, since he's a partner in this process.

1) Release for Kontakt only, as we usually do, and leave it at that.
2) Pay the huge fee up-front, take a chance, and release for Player. Risky for us financially, but would make the library available to anyone, not just folks with Kontakt.
3) Do an initial release for Kontakt only, see how it goes, and then consider releasing for Player in due course; possible free or cheap upgrade to folks who bought the Kontakt-only version to the Player version if they want it.

It would actually be very useful to gauge interest in a Player version. We'd have to front several thousands of dollars of cash to make it work, so we're (I hope understandably) cautious about that route. But – hell. The full Universe of Sounds library for the Emulator II? It's a rather more significant project than FadeWheel (http://www.rhythmicrobot.com/product/fadewheel)!

[the professor]

Understood, but I thought key-switching would be handy for selecting the different articulations, rather than load separate instruments in Kontakt.

Also, I was asking about it working in Kontakt 4.3.3 upwards

Oops... I was working so long on my massive, massive post above that I missed this. Yes, in any case it'll be Kontakt 4.2.3 and up in the Kontakt version And yes to articulations (where they exist in the original, which is not all that often; but when they're there, we're keeping them – see above )

[budweiser]

16 bit. I, personnaly, don't hear any difference with 24 bit samples, and it takes much more space on hard drives.

[DarkStar]

Prof - thank you very much for the clarifications - I only wish that other developers were as communicative.

I'm in

[the professor]

Prof - thank you very much for the clarifications - I only wish that other developers were as communicative.

I'm in

Cool!

[Timfonie]

16 bit will do fine

[kingtubby]

16 bit will do fine

+1

[aMUSEd]

Isn't the Kontakt filter a bit of a limitation compared to the original (which was an analog filter)?