KVR Audio

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 4:11 pm

ThomasHelzle wrote:I think Kontakt 6 has to really deliver something major to not fall behind now!

It's not a case of falling behind really. As I mentioned back at VI-Control, Falcon is not even trying to attack Kontakt's dominance on the sampler market. UVI markets Falcon as a hybrid synthesis playground, and that's what Falcon is. There are still things that Kontakt does best (huge sample libraries), and Falcon is not competition there. Nor does it try to be.

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 4:19 pm

Karten wrote:^ Thank you Simon for all of the above.

My pleasure

wagtunes · Post by **wagtunes** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 4:21 pm

EvilDragon wrote:
ThomasHelzle wrote:I think Kontakt 6 has to really deliver something major to not fall behind now!
It's not a case of falling behind really. As I mentioned back at VI-Control, Falcon is not even trying to attack Kontakt's dominance on the sampler market. UVI markets Falcon as a hybrid synthesis playground, and that's what Falcon is. There are still things that Kontakt does best (huge sample libraries), and Falcon is not competition there. Nor does it try to be.

I agree 100%. I see these as two totally different instruments. Kontakt can't even touch some of the things that Falcon can do and you'd be crazy to try to create one of Kontakt's symphonic libraries with this thing.

Apples and Oranges as far as I'm concerned. I'm still going to need both depending on what it is I'm doing.

Jake Jackson · Post by **Jake Jackson** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 4:37 pm

Well, are there limits to what Falcon can do with multisamples? Are there things that Kontakt can do that Falcon cannot? (My impression is that working with groups is much better in Falcon than in Kontakt. But are there trade-offs?)

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 4:44 pm

wagtunes wrote: Kontakt can't even touch some of the things that Falcon can do and you'd be crazy to try to create one of Kontakt's symphonic libraries with this thing.

No, not really, Kontakt would still be more efficient concerning loading times and RAM usage maybe, but other than that, Falcon can fully handle thousands of keygroups, round robins, keyswitches, articulation morphing via controllers, scripting, interfacing. I don't see any essential limits here.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 5:15 pm

From my experiences back with MF3 (and I am not sure Falcon is a whole lot better in this regard, since it still doesn't support multicore processing which Kontakt does), huge instruments with thousands of groups and tens of thousands of zones are still much more efficient in Kontakt. MF3 simply fell over, both in RAM and CPU. It's a no contest.

Increased modularity of MF3/Falcon has its own overheads. Lua is not as efficient as KSP, too. Kontakt's binary file format is much faster to parse and load than MF3/Falcon open XML based format, and so on.

I mean, I could repeat this test but I don't think it would yield much different results. It's simply two completely different frameworks.

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 5:22 pm

Yeah, let´s not turn this into a this vs that thread, it doesn't matter really, they can both co-exist and let's see what there will be developed for Falcon within the next years.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 5:24 pm

It's not my intention to turn this into a vs thread. Just stating my findings. Kontakt: huge amount of 3rd party libraries, much more efficient for pure DFD sample playback esp. for large libs, faster loading, background loading, etc. Falcon: creative synthesis playground. They complete rather than compete each other, IMHO.

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 5:35 pm

EvilDragon wrote:From my experiences back with MF3 (and I am not sure Falcon is a whole lot better in this regard, since it still doesn't support multicore processing which Kontakt does), huge instruments with thousands of groups and tens of thousands of zones are still much more efficient in Kontakt. MF3 simply fell over, both in RAM and CPU. It's a no contest.

Increased modularity of MF3/Falcon has its own overheads. Lua is not as efficient as KSP, too. Kontakt's binary file format is much faster to parse and load than MF3/Falcon open XML based format, and so on.

I mean, I could repeat this test but I don't think it would yield much different results. It's simply two completely different frameworks.

Thank you for that info! There is an important thing for me... multi core support. I think i can't go to far without multi-core support with falcon. That's a thing i didn't thought about yet.

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 5:37 pm

Just tried the image import - nice

With my thousands of textures from doing 3D-graphics I should have my hands full...

What I don't understand: can I save the resulting audio wavetable somehow or is the image always needed for reference?
Would make more sense to save it as a .wav sample IMO...?

What are the supported formats? Some BMPs, JPGs and PNGs seem to work, TIF doesn't, neither does PSD, TGA, GIF, EXR, HDR...
Many of my older textures in JPG format won't load, as do some BMPs.
I can't find documentation on what is supported and the docs are very vague in this point.
(would also fit nicely in the supported formats part of the Falcon webpage).

Cheers,

Tom

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:17 pm

The images are handled like samples and wavetables, so once imported you shouldn't move them. You can save the import result into your user library as an oscillator preset.

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:22 pm

Cinebient wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:From my experiences back with MF3 (and I am not sure Falcon is a whole lot better in this regard, since it still doesn't support multicore processing which Kontakt does), huge instruments with thousands of groups and tens of thousands of zones are still much more efficient in Kontakt. MF3 simply fell over, both in RAM and CPU. It's a no contest.

Increased modularity of MF3/Falcon has its own overheads. Lua is not as efficient as KSP, too. Kontakt's binary file format is much faster to parse and load than MF3/Falcon open XML based format, and so on.

I mean, I could repeat this test but I don't think it would yield much different results. It's simply two completely different frameworks.
Thank you for that info! There is an important thing for me... multi core support. I think i can't go to far without multi-core support with falcon. That's a thing i didn't thought about yet.

As a Logic user you don't benefit from multi-core support anyway. The only dev I know which found some sort of workaround is 2CAudio with Kaleidoscope, which in fact uses multiple cores (this can only be verified in Activity Monitor though, as Logic's core dispaly won't show that). The multi-core support in Kontakt is useless for Logic users. Just saying...

otristan · Post by **otristan** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:31 pm

Cinebient wrote:
otristan wrote:
Cinebient wrote:Can Falcon read wavetables created for Dune 2 too? For some reason my favourites even when the synth is not so advanced for wavtables like Serum f.e.
Would be great since Dune 2 seems to get an own wavetable editor in near future. So i could use it as my wavetable creator maybe. Serum is not my cup of tea and there is no really proper wavetable creator software for OSX out there (at least nothing for a beginner like me).
It depends on the format used by Dune 2.
Are those regular wav file with custom chunk ?
Well, as still a bloody beginner in these things i can´t answer this
Would it be possible to script such things?

Well if you send me a wavetable in Dune 2 format, I can check on my end on Monday.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:33 pm

Sampleconstruct wrote: As a Logic user you don't benefit from multi-core support anyway. The only dev I know which found some sort of workaround is 2CAudio with Kaleidoscope, which in fact uses multiple cores (this can only be verified in Activity Monitor though, as Logic's core dispaly won't show that). The multi-core support in Kontakt is useless for Logic users. Just saying...

I wouldn't count it as 100% the case though. This is just conjecture as I haven't used Logic for years now, but Urs Heckman was originally a Logic/AU fan and his latest CPU sucking synths all support multicore. If there is/was a way for Urs to get Logic to use multiple cores for a plug in, Urs would figure it out.

Then again Logic still can't receive or send MIDI from an AU which is by proxy holding that back for Audio Units in general.

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:37 pm

machinesworking wrote:
Sampleconstruct wrote: As a Logic user you don't benefit from multi-core support anyway. The only dev I know which found some sort of workaround is 2CAudio with Kaleidoscope, which in fact uses multiple cores (this can only be verified in Activity Monitor though, as Logic's core dispaly won't show that). The multi-core support in Kontakt is useless for Logic users. Just saying...
I wouldn't count it as 100% the case though. This is just conjecture as I haven't used Logic for years now, but Urs Heckman was originally a Logic/AU fan and his latest CPU sucking synths all support multicore. If there is/was a way for Urs to get Logic to use multiple cores for a plug in, Urs would figure it out.

Then again Logic still can't receive or send MIDI from an AU which is by proxy holding that back for Audio Units in general.

Well, Zebra definitely doesn't support multiple cores, I don't use Diva so I can't verify that. I would highly doubt she does though.

UVI Falcon - v4 = 2026 released - rumors, ads, praise, kindergarden, auto-sampling and off-topic inside!