The most future proof format for sampled instruments is SFZ

[lobanov]

Good article in SOS about NI policies and prices for developers:

Native Instruments Kontakt Player, why are there so few free and commercial releases?

[SampleScience]

If a developer wants to release a library compatible with the free Kontakt Player, it will cost him a price I cannot disclose but last time I checked, it was in the 5 figures. The end user ends up paying for it by buying commercial Kontakt libraries. Otherwise, the developer goes under.

For a library to be commercially viable, it must have a custom user interface. As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, only Sforzando supports customized user interfaces for Sfz libraries.

If your library is free, it's going to be free to add a user interface to it. If it's commercial, the developer will have to pay a yearly fee to Plogue, which I cannot disclose. However, this yearly fee is very reasonable, especially compared to NI Kontakt Player's licensing fee.

There's only one problem: There isn't much of a market for commercial Sfz libraries.

If Plogue's Sforzando would be like Decent Sampler, I think it would be much more popular.

Decent Sampler was successful very quickly because it offers what most developers want: a free player for the user base that is easy to get and user interface customization that is free of charge for everyone, including the developers.

It's also very stable and it gets regular updates consistently.

Thousands of Decent Sampler libraries are now available on the market, most of them being free via Pianobook.

It might come as a surprise, but most musicians want to make music. Anything that will help them reach their goal with as little hassle as possible will succeed.

They don't want to know about the inner workings of instruments. Believe it or not, but for many of them, plugins and Kontakt instruments are the same thing.

As a developer, I mostly sell plugins because that's what people know and it's also what is the most straightforward to use.

I tried selling other formats, but only Kontakt and Decent Samper libraries are worth it. Offering plain wav files that customers can load and map into their own samplers does sell though. But it's nothing compared to plugins, Kontakt and Decent Sampler libraries.

[SampleScience]

Good article in SOS about NI policies and prices for developers:

Native Instruments Kontakt Player, why are there so few free and commercial releases?

Very interesting article. The prices are lower than they used to be circa 2015, but it's still too much.

[audiojunkie]

If a developer wants to release a library compatible with the free Kontakt Player, it will cost him a price I cannot disclose but last time I checked, it was in the 5 figures. The end user ends up paying for it by buying commercial Kontakt libraries. Otherwise, the developer goes under.

For a library to be commercially viable, it must have a custom user interface. As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, only Sforzando supports customized user interfaces for Sfz libraries.

If your library is free, it's going to be free to add a user interface to it. If it's commercial, the developer will have to pay a yearly fee to Plogue, which I cannot disclose. However, this yearly fee is very reasonable, especially compared to NI Kontakt Player's licensing fee.

There's only one problem: There isn't much of a market for commercial Sfz libraries.

If Plogue's Sforzando would be like Decent Sampler, I think it would be much more popular.

Decent Sampler was successful very quickly because it offers what most developers want: a free player for the user base that is easy to get and user interface customization that is free of charge for everyone, including the developers.

It's also very stable and it gets regular updates consistently.

Thousands of Decent Sampler libraries are now available on the market, most of them being free via Pianobook.

It might come as a surprise, but most musicians want to make music. Anything that will help them reach their goal with as little hassle as possible will succeed.

They don't want to know about the inner workings of instruments. Believe it or not, but for many of them, plugins and Kontakt instruments are the same thing.

As a developer, I mostly sell plugins because that's what people know and it's also what is the most straightforward to use.

I tried selling other formats, but only Kontakt and Decent Samper libraries are worth it. Offering plain wav files that customers can load and map into their own samplers does sell though. But it's nothing compared to plugins, Kontakt and Decent Sampler libraries.

I don't know of any other samplers that import Decent Sampler libraries though. That would be almost as important as having access to the actual samples for future proofing. I don't have anything against Decent Sampler. I just don't think it is as ubiquitously supported like SFZ is.

Are the WAV files openly accessible like SFZ is? Is the Decent Sampler format open and able to be used by everyone? If so, it may be a good alternative. I know that there is a converter available that can convert from Decent Sampler and back. Decent Sampler is an interesting option.

[lobanov]

Good article in SOS about NI policies and prices for developers:

Native Instruments Kontakt Player, why are there so few free and commercial releases?

Very interesting article. The prices are lower than they used to be circa 2015, but it's still too much.

On the page on NI site I cited in my prevoius post there are "example orders". Prices are 4-5 figures, almost 1500 euros for a product with modest expectations about sales (and therefore a low numbers of issued serial numbers). So the prices aren't a very big secret.

[BONES]

It doesn't make sense because you've decided to jump into a topic where you know little of what is being talked about, you don't even really know what is being talked about, you apparently just want to shill for a sampler you haven't even got.

I know exactly what's being talked about. For better or worse, I've been using SFZ files for 15 years or more and, as I said, I'd rather just save the wav files and skip the wrapper. The wavs I can load into anything, SFZs not so much. And if something gets complicated enough that it really needs a wrapper, then I'd prefer it was something that works with the tools I already have, like Kontakt. That's a level of convenience worth paying for.

Smoke as much copium as you want but N.I. are getting money for people using the player, contrary to what you thought.

And providing excellent value for that money. Companies are allowed to make money, that's how they can afford to pay their employees, so that those employees can afford to house and feed their families. Have you ever had a job?

The deeper I did into the format and the development community around it, the more I see the flaws in the SFZ format itself. It is not a perfect format--that is to be sure. Having to determine the lowest common denominator of supported opcodes between the various SFZ parsers in order to make sure your samples will run on every available SFZ parser is not ideal.

Exactly the kind of issue I was talking about with reference to open source.

To sum it up: It's unencrypted access to the instrument samples and the near universal ability of all samplers to import to some extent the instrument configuration information of the format that makes SFZ the best format.

You say "near universal'" but none of the samplers I use on a daily basis support it - Equator, Presence XT or Kontakt Player - so I have to have a VSTi around specifically to cater to it, which makes it kind of annoying to me. I normally bypass it and go straight to the wav files. FO rmultisampled instruments, I am happier with a proprietary format like Kontakt. Even soundfonts are preferable to sfz for me.

The proper standard cannot be closed.

Really? It seems to work pretty well for Apple.

This is the marketing strategy of NI. Good one. Smart and crafty. But this is rather marketing than music and music technologies.

It works for me and, at the end of the day, isn't that want every one wants - something that gets the job done without fuss? Maybe NI are leveraging their position as the ones who did it all first but surely they have that right? Thousands of livelihoods depend on it.

[jancivil]

For example, NI suddenly no longer activates certain libraries that users have purchased. This means the user can no
longer use them - they are then simply gone.

"For example," - I see no example. Can you show us?

See, every time I look at Native Access I see the very first things I bought, in one case a Kompakt version*, back in '03. Garritan Personal Orchestra (& GPO K2); EWQLSO Silver Edition; *PSP Drumkit From Hell. /haven't had any of those files for like 15 yrs.
(Note: this is on Sonoma, Mac OS14 public beta)

I tend to doubt assertions such as that one, based in this:

As of May 31, 2020, a range of legacy products from Native Instruments and third-party manufacturers, as well as the activation tool Service Center, will be discontinued. [...]

The affected products include discontinued software instruments like B4-II, Pro-53, etc., as well as sample libraries for KONTAKT. [...]

However, we have found a workaround that allows the KONTAKT libraries to be used regularly after May 31st on computers running OS X 10.9 (and above) or Windows 7 / 8 / 10. These KONTAKT libraries now can be registered, activated, and added with Native Access and show up correctly in KONTAKT's library browser. You can find the libraries that still can be used on OS X 10.9 (and above) and Windows 7 / 8 / 10 in the product list below.

it's a long list: https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... nd-of-Life
NB: these things will be in one's NI list of serial numbers products. I'm virtually certain all the things in Kontakt World that aren't are not in the least affected (I have a couple) so I seriously doubt there's an issue at all. edit: obv. unless one is on Windows Vista, XP or pre-OSX.9. & beyond eg., Windows 10 or OSX one simply uses the appropriate NA version.


Some of us just want to make music, while some of us are ideologues with an axe to grind. And the latter's arguments look like strawmen and projecting personal insults that cross the border into total nonsense. CF: "they actively make life harder for you" -
to keep their pockets lined" - whoop, there it is. So this is basically children hating that stuff costs money? I had to laugh at BONES' "Have you ever had a job?"

[enroe]

For example, NI suddenly no longer activates certain libraries that users have purchased.
This means the user can no longer use them - they are then simply gone.

"For example," - I see no example. Can you show us?

Before you jump into this thread - completely clueless - you
should work through these threads:

Sad state of Native Instruments:
viewtopic.php?t=592030

NI-Library updates:
viewtopic.php?t=601520

NI-activations:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=541076

And there are many more. This above are only those in KVR.

[Largos]

Some of us just want to make music, while some of us are ideologues with an axe to grind. And the latter's arguments look like strawmen and projecting personal insults that cross the border into total nonsense. CF: "they actively make life harder for you" -
to keep their pockets lined" - whoop, there it is. So this is basically children hating that stuff costs money? I had to laugh at BONES' "Have you ever had a job?"

They are actively making it harder for BONES by not having something as basic for an outfit that size as being able to use SFZ with Kontakt player, When companies choose to use walled garden policies, it's not for the customer benefit. Equating being against bad practice to being against paid software is a clownish leap to conclusion. You "just want to make music" yet you'll spend time hilariously defending some company that couldn't care less about you.

https://digitalwellbeing.org/how-market ... decisions/

I know exactly what's being talked about. For better or worse, I've been using SFZ files for 15 years or more and, as I said, I'd rather just save the wav files and skip the wrapper. The wavs I can load into anything, SFZs not so much. And if something gets complicated enough that it really needs a wrapper, then I'd prefer it was something that works with the tools I already have, like Kontakt. That's a level of convenience worth paying for.

Can't take you seriously when you are still calling SFZ a wrapper. Nor when you are talking about Kontakt player being worth paying for when you didn't think you were.

[audiojunkie]

It doesn't make sense because you've decided to jump into a topic where you know little of what is being talked about, you don't even really know what is being talked about, you apparently just want to shill for a sampler you haven't even got.

I know exactly what's being talked about. For better or worse, I've been using SFZ files for 15 years or more and, as I said, I'd rather just save the wav files and skip the wrapper. The wavs I can load into anything, SFZs not so much. And if something gets complicated enough that it really needs a wrapper, then I'd prefer it was something that works with the tools I already have, like Kontakt. That's a level of convenience worth paying for.

Smoke as much copium as you want but N.I. are getting money for people using the player, contrary to what you thought.

And providing excellent value for that money. Companies are allowed to make money, that's how they can afford to pay their employees, so that those employees can afford to house and feed their families. Have you ever had a job?

The deeper I did into the format and the development community around it, the more I see the flaws in the SFZ format itself. It is not a perfect format--that is to be sure. Having to determine the lowest common denominator of supported opcodes between the various SFZ parsers in order to make sure your samples will run on every available SFZ parser is not ideal.

Exactly the kind of issue I was talking about with reference to open source.

To sum it up: It's unencrypted access to the instrument samples and the near universal ability of all samplers to import to some extent the instrument configuration information of the format that makes SFZ the best format.

You say "near universal'" but none of the samplers I use on a daily basis support it - Equator, Presence XT or Kontakt Player - so I have to have a VSTi around specifically to cater to it, which makes it kind of annoying to me. I normally bypass it and go straight to the wav files. FO rmultisampled instruments, I am happier with a proprietary format like Kontakt. Even soundfonts are preferable to sfz for me.

The proper standard cannot be closed.

Really? It seems to work pretty well for Apple.

This is the marketing strategy of NI. Good one. Smart and crafty. But this is rather marketing than music and music technologies.

It works for me and, at the end of the day, isn't that want every one wants - something that gets the job done without fuss? Maybe NI are leveraging their position as the ones who did it all first but surely they have that right? Thousands of livelihoods depend on it.

I'll agree that open source has its flaws to go along with its strengths.

I'll also agree that Soundfonts are a suitable format, even if they don't allow for the higher sample/hz quality that is offered by SFZ. There are open source converters that allow one to pull the samples or convert from one format to another. People still sell soundfonts. They do pretty much the same thing. However, the samples aren't readily available without access to a converter. That, and the lower audio quality (compared to SFZ) are reasons I feel SFZ is superior. However, I won't deny that industry support of soundfont is nearly as ubiquitous as SFZ. They are both probably the formats that I consider most useful and future proof. I also put Decent Sampler instruments in this category, although I would rank them below Soundfonts, because although they are open, they are not as ubiquitously supported in the industry. They do, however, have the strength of exposing the wav files, which Soundfonts don't do.

If I were to rank IMHO the most futureproof formats, SFZ would still be in first place, followed by Soundfonts, followed by DecentSampler instruments.

[audiojunkie]

Let's try to stay on topic, everyone. While discussing Kontakt is "somewhat" related, the main focus on this thread is the subject of the "the most future proof sampler format", to which I still assert that SFZ (flawed though it may be), is the most future proof.

Saying this doesn't take away from the fact that I agree that having the actual samples, properly named, looped and edited is the absolutely most important thing, but the wav files alone are not a "sampler format" per se.

I personally collect any quality collection of multisamples that is available, despite the format, as long as I can pull the samples from them. However, when I try to create instruments from these samples, my first choice (despite its flaws), would be SFZ. As mentioned above, Soundfonts would probably be a close second.

[JeffLearman]

So why not just archive the wav samples themselves? Why bother with any kind of wrapper? That's all we've ever done. If we need to rebuild them into a different multi-sample format, it's not much effort.

If you ignore the metadata, then all you have are trivial mappings of waves to notes (and without layers!) Believe me, the differences in sfz implementations are about fine points that are ignored in the "wave only" world.

Anyway, this entire discussion is a perfect example of what makes open source so bloody useless. Everyone goes their own way, leaving a dog's breakfast for people who have no interest in it and just want to make music.

Open source is hardly "bloody useless." Nearly all modern commercial software development depends heavily on it. Without it, there would be no cloud, no apps, no ... well, we'd be a little past where we were before open source flourished in the early 90's, but not nearly as far as we are. I've been developing embedded and other software since the 70's. Trust me, open source is a significant contribution to the world.

Does it come with disadvantages? Sure. Just like any advancement.

Note that the dog's breakfast also applies to commercial software, where you're limited to only those formats that the software supports -- or, if you want to be sure you get the identical experience intended by the soundware creator, you have to limit yourself to its proprietary formats.

[JeffLearman]

Except that never happens, does it? I've got Kontakt libraries that are 6 or 7 years old and they continue to work just fine.

I have sfz libraries I've used for nearly 20 years and they still work just fine.

The advancements in sfz are all backwards-compatible.

[JeffLearman]

Kontakt is a standard, used by all the pros, and it has been around for decades. SFZ is the upstart here, the one who wouldn't conform to a standard. |IIRC, it was created by the guy who made z3ta+ and Pentagon, wasn't it?

Which standard do you think they should have conformed to? sf2?

While Kontakt is a "standard" much like Cadillac used to be a standard for quality, the Kontakt format is proprietary, undocumented, and expensive to create samplesets for. The Kontakt format is NOT a standard. Small-time parties wanting to create cheap and free samplesets can't use Kontakt. Yet a lot of great work has been done by small-time parties.

It is a "standard" from the standpoint of a commercial soundware creator, simply because it's the biggest market. But that doesn't mean "future-proof."

Sfz is significantly more future-proof than Kontakt ever was or ever will be, because it's human readable, and the wave files can be left intact.

On the other hand, maybe AI will bail us all out and manage to understand all formats ever -- except of course for encrypted content (which is the case for many Kontakt samplesets.)

[JeffLearman]

As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, only Sforzando supports customized user interfaces for Sfz libraries.

You're right, with the caveat that they no longer accept any new developers for GUIs. So, essentially, unless you're already in the door, Sforando does NOT support GUIs for you.

I'd like to see an open format for adding GUIs to sfz. Maybe someday.