Kontakt Player Alternative

[pljones]

why i have to pay the same price for a library when i have purchased full kontakt like someone with player only?

This does irritate me. I'd like to buy all the Abbey Road drum libraries. If buying K5 made them cheaper, I'd buy K5 but it doesn't, so I'm sticking with K4 -- and not buying the libraries, either. So NI lose out both ways. I've no interest at all in any of the other parts of Komplete, otherwise it would be a bargain just to get the drum libraries and everything else -- just that "everything else" is worthless to me.

[jancivil]

So you never shelled out over two £grand for a hardware sampler that came with four floppy disks (6Mb of library) and then shelled out another £1,000 for memory expansion and then £750 for a 40Mb SCSI hard drive?

At €300-odd with GB of library and terabytes of free and inexpensive library out there, Kontakt's a bargain!

Well, everything nowadays is cheaper relative to what it used to cost in the 80s and 90s (analog gear aside). I couldn't even afford a battered-up DX7 back in the early 90s when I was trying to get started. For sampling I had to settle with my Amiga 500.

But a lot of people who are looking at Kontakt are just looking to play back sample libraries as it's become almost a universal format (all your releases are in Kontakt format).

So €300-odd to essentially remove the 15 minute demo limit of Kontakt Player is quite expensive. Although as has been said, there are ways to get it cheaper from crossgrades and sales etc as well as buying it as part of Komplete.

That's a special way to frame it. The price of Kontakt is to remove the demo timing out. No, that's a free demo, most of the time it's normal to pay for a full license, and that's what this is. It's an actual product with a price tag.

True, compared to paying nothing a few hundred is really harsh.

[bigcat1969]

Everything is a matter of perspective. For $200 you get an entry level pro version of virtually every acoustic instrument known to western music, a decent choir, tons of interesting synth sounds and some world instruments thrown in. If you look through the half dozen or so lists of free kontakt instruments, you can add basically two more sets of the basic instruments, symphony, band etc... and lots of quirky instruments. Of course you also get the 'opportunity' to purchase some very high end instruments that work only in kontakt.
For me that's worth it and I'm notoriously cheap and think everything would be free in a perfect world.

[GospelMusicians]

If you send me a PM, I can get you a 15-Day Trial of one of my UVI libraries so you can test it out and get a feel for it.

[SampleScience]

I have installed the latest UVI worstation, downloaded the demo soundbank and another of their demo product. It's the only serious free alternative I can think of. Even for the demo you have beautiful GUI, and it's free!

[Josmoker]

For certain instruments the Vienna instruments would be an alternative as well. Though that option is certainly not on the cheap side.

[jancivil]

It depends. I just saw VSL 'Prepared Piano' for 65 euros, which like everything else provides Vienna Instruments engine. What do the other prepared piano libraries run?

(IRCAM Prepared Piano for UVI, $399.
Big Fish Audio John Cage Prepared Piano - John Cage's prepared piano sounds for his Sonatas & Interludes / John Cage's prepared piano sounds for his Sonatas & Interludes, for Kontakt $99.95.)

[bigcat1969]

The VSL and the Big Fish look very comparable to me, but the IRCAM seems to be fully customizable and massively more heavily sampled, 12k versus 1.5k samples, so that explains the price diff.
A 4k sample Kontakt prepared piano is available for $120 sort of competes with the big UVI one from Soundiron.

[jancivil]

The Big Fish one is from the Gigastudio days (ca 1999) and is pretty limited in terms of depth and the descriptions of the sounds looks kind of limited. There are 5 articulations and three dynamics p, mf, f. Presenting what one needs to do this one John Cage comp and is authorized to do exactly that.

The VSL one is relatively new and the system requirements say you need 4.4 GB. It lists 7 articulations but I don't know what it amounts to keymapped. By articulation, they mean a patch and I expect there are several approaches to one articulation. I don't know what Big Fish is doing, but VSL's is 8 times the size. This is something pretty different than the Big Fish product. From my experience with VSL special sort of libraries like this, it's going to be pretty avant-garde. Although the demos are by Guy Bacos in a romantic mode that really doesn't show much.

The IRCAM is kind of special, allowing two 'layers' for each string and with a 'dice' preset which puts a random set on a layer. And vastly more articulations than the above. However the VI Pro interface provides 8 A and B slots for layering, with a mixer and panner for each; the B slots can be crossfaded in by CC. The non-pro VIP engine provides 2 A & B slots. You cannot custom-map the samples.



Struck Grand Piano by SOUNDIRON (I still think of Tonehammer) is an insane deal at $119, 9GB. "total control over up to 12 independent layers of sound", I would say that it blows IRCAM in a UVI engine out of the water, given my experience with Tonehammer scripting and GUI.

[bigcat1969]

And I thought I was telling you something. Thanks for that information, very interesting.

[jancivil]

If I'd had the money, the VSL I would have picked up last month with one other single to get a third for free. That's how I would buy their things, every once and a while they do these promos, they are like drug dealers giving you a taste.

I'm coveting the Soundiron for a while now. Those libs are deep and the GUI lays things out for control so well.

[jsp1979]

Soniccouture's Xtended Piano is another in that vein and it's excellent. It also works in the Kontakt Player.

[timboy]

Hi all. Does anyone know if now in 2019 there has been anyone make an alternative player to Kontakt. That can play nkis libraries

preferably a free one please

I noticed as bigcat1969 said on P1, motu MachFive 3 looks like it works, it says it supports Kontakt libraries
https://motu.com/products/software/machfive/sounds.html But £230 squids

[harvon]

There are rather many free alternatives to kontakt / kontakt player. None of them plays kontakt libraries at the moment. However many are quite capable by themselves, they just need free instrument libraries. These players have been around for quite a long time, and because of that I just wonder why none of them has attracted people who make all the nice and free instrument vsts and sample packs?

The kontakt instrument library format is proprietary. Is it nevertheless possible and legal to make a compatible player for instruments of that library format, and even more, that is not subject to the 15 min demo limit?

There are free romplers that don't let users to make their own instruments and libraries.
* not an interesting alternative because one has to pay for instruments

Then there are free open samplers.
* they let users make their own instruments, maybe even libraries
* tx16wx might be currently the best candidate for a free kontakt alternative
* other possibilities grace, magix independence, (shortcircuit which is discontinued)

And we have the old shool soundfont (sf2, sfz) players too.
* both soundfont specifications are rather old and apparently too limited, too simple, so making new soundfont libraries is not really the way to a good kontakt alternative.
* lots of players are available but most if not all are missing features, and many are no longer developed. There is room and need for a feature-rich, multitimbral 32/64bit vst player I believe.
* sfz, sforzando, phenome, dsk sf2, kx-sf2, sobanth, bassmidi, juicyplayer, and others

And finally, don't forget hise which is an open source audio framework for building virtual instruments and effects.
* you can make instruments and effects with hise, I don't know if instrument libraries are possible
* there is no hise player however

So why we don't already have lots of instruments or patches for tx16wx?

[EvilDragon]

The kontakt instrument library format is proprietary. Is it nevertheless possible and legal to make a compatible player for instruments of that library format, and even more, that is not subject to the 15 min demo limit?

No.