Is Kontakt still the best sampler?

[chk071]

For the rest of use not into scripting Kontakt is... not user friendly. Personally I have done the minimum of work in Kontakt, have to YouTube it every time I do. It is a sample player (I'm one of the annoying, "If it don't sample, it ain't a sampler" brigade) and gets treated as such. Except I would do more editing on even a sample player, it's not exactly conducive to spontaneous creativity. I guess I miss the hardware days on this front (you know, the ones that actually sample).

Is there a soft sampler you like that actually samples? There doesn't seem to be much consensus on this, which leads me to believe that most folks who are into sampling are using what the have in their DAW. I'm also going to guess they are mostly Live, Logic, Cubase, and FL Studio users...maybe Reason, too.

That's what I wrote earlier. Not sure why people are so obsessed with sampling, when you can sample in your DAW much easier. Seems more like an esoteric "But... a sampler has to SAMPLE!" lament.

[FapFilter]

Much easier? In the DAWs i know you have to create a new track, make the routing, arm it, record and copy & paste or drag & drop your stuff into your sampler of choice first instead of just record the input.
Of course most of this can be done still quite quickly via keyboard commands, but it's still way more convoluted than the “sampler that actually samples method“ as far as i'm concerned.

[chk071]

Ok, let's say "easy enough". So easy that I don't know how much sense it would make to implement a complex recording system in a sampler plugin.

[Mr Arkadin]

I'm not even talking about scripting, just pure usability. I used them all and a lot of things are just not as fast as in Kontakt.

Your whole life is Kontakt, so I would imagine you do find it easy. I'm saying it isn't particularly inviting to people like me who just like to dabble, except as an industry standard player.

Is there a soft sampler you like that actually samples?

Don't think so. There used to be some. I'm not that bothered that they don't sample, except for the terminology, but I'm a bit of a language nerd and like proper use of verbs, adjectives etc. so that's just me. Sample Manipulator would be a more accurate term, but I'll admit it's not as catchy.

I always thought Kontakt is as user friendly as the library you are working with. Unless you mean the basic functionality of Kontakt itself, which is pretty straight forward IMO.

I mean the spanner stuff. Assigning samples to keys, all the scripting stuff - the tiny GUI doesn't help here. I just look at it and lose interest. Guess I'm more about writing music these days than messing about with samples. Maybe back in the day I would have dug deep into something like this. Life's too short now.

[EvilDragon]

Sure Kontakt is my dayjob but I have spent hours with almost all other samplers out there, so I like to think I have a rather fair assessment on things. There are always pros and cons everywhere, and the closest a sampler has gotten to challenge Kontakt on features and UI/UX is Falcon. Everything else is just slower to use for one reason or another (I guess a fair mention here would be Shortcircuit, which obviates the concept of "instrument" meaning you can just directly map a sample into a multi without an instrument part created, which is nifty... but there are other slowdown points in Shortcircuit that make it a bit more tedious when doing some other things, etc.).

Worry not though, Kontakt does have pain points (just like any other sampler out there), but stuff like mapping and wave editor can be popped out (in standalone) for bigger overview, and for example looping with the overlapping view was done basically perfectly in Kontakt and no other sampler has done it as good as that to my knowledge.


Also, I am not even considering scripting in these assesments, since it's not universally available in all the samplers out there.

[AnX]

sfz

[EvilDragon]

Ain't a sampler but just a format tho.

[telecharge]

Sure Kontakt is my dayjob but I have spent hours with almost all other samplers out there, so I like to think I have a rather fair assessment on things. There are always pros and cons everywhere, and the closest a sampler has gotten to challenge Kontakt on features and UI/UX is Falcon.

What do you like for chopping/flipping a sample or loop?

[Mr Arkadin]

Sure Kontakt is my dayjob but I have spent hours with almost all other samplers out there, so I like to think I have a rather fair assessment on things. There are always pros and cons everywhere, and the closest a sampler has gotten to challenge Kontakt on features and UI/UX is Falcon. Everything else is just slower to use for one reason or another (I guess a fair mention here would be Shortcircuit, which obviates the concept of "instrument" meaning you can just directly map a sample into a multi without an instrument part created, which is nifty... but there are other slowdown points in Shortcircuit that make it a bit more tedious when doing some other things, etc.).

Worry not though, Kontakt does have pain points (just like any other sampler out there), but stuff like mapping and wave editor can be popped out (in standalone) for bigger overview, and for example looping with the overlapping view was done basically perfectly in Kontakt and no other sampler has done it as good as that to my knowledge.


Also, I am not even considering scripting in these assesments, since it's not universally available in all the samplers out there.

Ah, Shortcircuit was the one that actually sampled wasn't it? Tried it but it was after development was cancelled so didn't really want to invest any time in it. I guess what I miss is immediacy, what I think of as 'dirty sampling'.

So Kontakt is great if you want multi-sample, multi-round robin, legato scripting what-nots, but for me sampling was plugging in a record deck, mic, whatever, into the front of a Casio FZ-10M, hitting record, sample now mapped to keyboard. Zoom in to waveform to cut off top and tail. That was pretty much it and I could have done it in the time it took to read that sentence. No YouTube videos, no forums, just a manual and a tiny LCD screen.

There used be a sampler on Scope that I loved (STS-5000) as it was based on the Akai S-series, but sadly that's unusable now (still use Scope though). TAL-Sampler is the nearest I have got to that 'dirty' experience. Sure it's not fancy, but I'm not making Spitfire libraries here.

[EvilDragon]

SC didn't sample no.

TX16Wx samples. HALion too.

[kinwie]

I'm not even talking about scripting, just pure usability. I used them all and a lot of things are just not as fast as in Kontakt.

sfz is faster
Ohh okay, it's a format
Then the samplers are sforzando or sfizz

[GRUMP]

I just want to remind of MIDI modules (Arp, Seq, ...), (awesome) Grain + WT Engine, sub presets, unison (without a script :/), programm tree (selection & management), looping, exporting files, managing layers, moving FX and surely some more. Keyfollow for the Amp for example.

You can´t really compare those both, but I quickly decided for Halion back then and I was right as it seems. I´m not deep insides Kontakt yet, but it is yet obvious that it has some severe disadvanatges for working multisamples.

It´s probably not necessary to mention the advantages...

Concerning Sampling: direct-sampling has a severe disadvatage called file management while you might just have all files in their place and map with drag´n drop :/ MRecorder?

[PatchAdamz]

SC didn't sample no.

TX16Wx samples. HALion too.

Geist 2 samples

[v1o]

Sure Kontakt is my dayjob but I have spent hours with almost all other samplers out there, so I like to think I have a rather fair assessment on things. There are always pros and cons everywhere, and the closest a sampler has gotten to challenge Kontakt on features and UI/UX is Falcon. Everything else is just slower to use for one reason or another (I guess a fair mention here would be Shortcircuit, which obviates the concept of "instrument" meaning you can just directly map a sample into a multi without an instrument part created, which is nifty... but there are other slowdown points in Shortcircuit that make it a bit more tedious when doing some other things, etc.).

Worry not though, Kontakt does have pain points (just like any other sampler out there), but stuff like mapping and wave editor can be popped out (in standalone) for bigger overview, and for example looping with the overlapping view was done basically perfectly in Kontakt and no other sampler has done it as good as that to my knowledge.


Also, I am not even considering scripting in these assesments, since it's not universally available in all the samplers out there.

Apart from professional library developers. I don't know anyone that makes their own sampler patches in Kontakt. Something as simple as taking a sample synth note and then pitching across the keyboard isn't exactly straightforward.

Orchestral Tools and Spitfire are running away from Kontakt. I'm assuming there are certain inadequacies with scripting and debugging multi giga byte sample libraries. So they've decided to develop their own proprietary sample players.

[AnX]

Ain't a sampler but just a format tho.

wrong

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/sfz-by-cakewalk