One of the best investment I did was to buy Kontakt 5 full, you get instant access to a world of sampled instruments, from the Spitfire labs to Sound Dust to a wide variety of smaller sample libraries producers, there is so much choice that you can never go wrong. As a sampler itself, kontakt is nice for the scripting abilities, but I prefer Alchemy (apple only) and iZotope Iris.
As for the muted trumpet sample, It was pretty good, but I honestly wouldn't expect NI to give away their "best" samples with the free player. These are nothing but teasers to entice you to buy more dynamic sample libraries. Then on to the locked features in the free versions, only to be "unlocked for the price of the full version. I would always choose hardware samplers over software, but not many manufacturers are still producing good hardware samplers. Thanks for posting Woody.
you're right, they do say these are smaller versions of the sampled instruments. but i think it would have been wiser to give the best quality multi-samples available in the free version, but for only a small number of instruments. that would give a better indication of the real power, these single layer samples left me a bit deflated.
I agree with your assessments - the sounds are all over the place in terms of quality and utility. The muted trumpet sounded decent until I realized it was all from you adding expressive bits rather than the inherent sound. Sure it is free, but it lacks the dynamics of my 25-year old EMU sample-synth! Intriguing enough for me to check out though - I just joined the Roland Cloud and am trying to 'get with the new millennium' :)
hi michael, yeah, i would encourage you to try it out yourself if you are curious. as you say this just gives you a taste of the full version, but interesting and enjoyable anyway. some of the other free instruments in komplete players impressed me a lot more, so make sure to try those too.
Kontakt Free Player will also run quite a few of the more expensive sample packs which are Player compatible, so the full software isn't required. But Kontakt pack land is enormous, so its not always easy to find them all. And most Player compatible packs offer plenty of editing and tweaking options (incl ability to save your own patches or snapshots. Best time to buy full Kontakt (or Komplete, or any of the other instruments) is during NI's twice yearly sales when they often offer 50% off.
As a come on, there is some reasonable stuff in that lot. I definitely wouldn't use any of those these days, but, for someone just getting into it, there's some stuff. As you note, you'll really want to shell out for the real deal if you want better and real fiddling with knobs and dynamics etc. I was spoilt when I first bought NI stuff, I ended up with an Ultimate version 8 I think off a chap on e-bay, been updating every time since. Current version, if you can afford it, is really something spectacular.
cool ebay score you got there! yeah, i see the kontakt player as an education, just to see if it works on your system, but for decent sounds you probably want to upgrade. now is a good time actually with some current deals.
Even though I have the full version of Kontakt 6 as well as NI's fantastic Abbey Road Drummer Collection I still think the Factory Selection included all of Band's best samples like the basses, organ and clavi. In the past I have used Factory Selection in Mixcraft with Mixcraft's stock VSTs for things like saxophones and strings. But even though I bought the full version stand alone and paid full price I still think the full version was a good investment especially considering there are so many great freebies to load into Kontakt plus the full version allows you to create and script your own Kontakt libraries.
Great video and a fantastic intro. Third party designers have to apply to NI to turn their libraries into official NI libraries that work on the free player. They also have to pay a substantial fee for this, I'm talking 1000's not 100's here, which is why many don't, and their libraries will only work in the full version....you have to select them through the 'files' menu, rather than the 'libraries' tab. Regarding velocity, well that's all under the hood. The two little cogs you see in the top left corner of your instrument, become a spanner in the full version. You click it and you have access to everything....envelopes, modifiers(LFO etc), effects(reverb, filters etc) and of course, velocity strength. Of yea....and the main sampler of course :) A tip for you Woody....rather than double clicking an NkI(Native Kontakt Instrument file) and then having to change midi channel, just drag n drop the new file over the current instrument.
Im downloading it now Man....ok heres my deal. Im looking for a "Lap Steel Guitar VST" and the ONLY One(s) that seems to ever been created are from ORANGE TREE SAMPLES for example BUT Requirement is, must have like you said, Must have FULL Version of Kontact Komplete...yet thats like $600 USD...(That Aint gonna happen for me here anytime soon) Im still hoping though that somehow in HOPE AGAINST HOPE that I can rig something up to get that Sound of a Lap Steel Guitar. Thanks Man
The Komplete Kontack Klayer Kuniverse is Konfusing. I have been researching this for the last few weeks given the November discounts. Appreciate your video and the Sheik intro was good. The video gave me a better feel for what this is about. The Free sounds are not stellar so you saved me a ton of time here. I'll pass on Kontatk.
Thanks again for the comprehensive and very fair review. The Kontact universe and sounds are just not for me. You saved me a ton of time also. Keep up the great work!
So, I'm going to get the Symphony Series - Collections (by Native Instruments) and I'm still confused on if I want the Kontakt Player or Kontakt, and I'm not gonna share my music I'll just listen to it myself.
Can you tell me did it take a LONG TIME to "Configure" for both The NATIVE ACCESS And The Kontact 5?...Mine has been configuring for (approx) hours now...its like it stuck & it keeps on acting like its configuring, and theres no way to stop it unless I stop the complete process after all this time by means of The TASK MGR> whats a matter with it , can you help me. Thanks
The worse part of the Kontakt player isn't even that youre basically stuck with the stock sounds unless u wanna pay a fortune. But its that you can't even upload your own samples ans create ur own instrument in the free library. I was underwelmed by Kontakt but had my socks blown off by Reaktor 6 that thing is insane. One of the few plugs I heard and wanted to spend money to keep and get more
The part about the 3rd party stuff is not true. I recently bought a great library "Session keys electric R" and it didn't require me to buy Kontakt (I use the free version for a year now).
thanks SF, I guess it's a mixed bag then, certainly the libs I was interested in all required full version, for example, Emulator II OMI Universe of Sounds and the top selling Zero-G packs.
Woody Piano Shack Interesting. I'm also using many of the libs by NI as they support the free version too. However, how did you run all the Kontakt instances in one window? Tutorial, please :p I always have one Kontakt instance for each instrument (RAM doesn't like that, tho).
i had multiple instruments running in one kontakt instance on a single track. i just double click on an preset and it opens right up as a new instrument in the kontakt rack on the next available midi channel. that's the default, right?
i was just changing the midi-channel that my keyboard was transmitting on during the demo, but for chic i just routed the midi of each track to the track that contained kontakt. and made sure that each midi-track was on different channels.
For a minute, I thought they were releasing the full version of Kontakt, but no it's the sh*ty Kontakt player which limits everything to 15 minutes. No way I'm paying 300 euros/pounds/dollars for a sample player, that's ridiculous.
You expect them to release the full version for free? And you don't pay 300 euros/pounds/dollars for a sample player, you pay for the full version which is a sampler. And if you're really clever you wait until this time of the year when everything is half price and buy Komplete. And it is bloody good value for what you get.
the 15 minute limitation only kicks in if you try and load 3rd party libraries that are only compatible with the full version,. It's a pity but there are no such limitations with the NI libraries.
You should seriously check out the Orange Tree guitar packs for Kontakt. www.orangetreesamples.com had several guitar players raise their brows when hearing those. They are incredible close to the real thing considdered its still just a bunch of sampled articulations :) And you can use them in so many ways eg switching art. with keys, or set it up to vel. switching to "easy" enhance a normal dull midi guitar track sound more than reasonable.
yeah, that's a tricky issue. but i figure that if two musicians use the same piano, they can still create different music...? maybe with some tweaking of the presets and innovative usage you can still get your own wound.
The other Native Instruments libraries tend to have better sounds plus there are loads of 3rd party Kontakt libraries. I have this working in Mixcraft and I myself was very skeptical about getting the full version but it's different to other VST instruments and not as expensive as other VST sample libraries.
One of the best investment I did was to buy Kontakt 5 full, you get instant access to a world of sampled instruments, from the Spitfire labs to Sound Dust to a wide variety of smaller sample libraries producers, there is so much choice that you can never go wrong. As a sampler itself, kontakt is nice for the scripting abilities, but I prefer Alchemy (apple only) and iZotope Iris.
As for the muted trumpet sample, It was pretty good, but I honestly wouldn't expect NI to give away their "best" samples with the free player. These are nothing but teasers to entice you to buy more dynamic sample libraries. Then on to the locked features in the free versions, only to be "unlocked for the price of the full version. I would always choose hardware samplers over software, but not many manufacturers are still producing good hardware samplers. Thanks for posting Woody.
you're right, they do say these are smaller versions of the sampled instruments. but i think it would have been wiser to give the best quality multi-samples available in the free version, but for only a small number of instruments. that would give a better indication of the real power, these single layer samples left me a bit deflated.
I agree with your assessments - the sounds are all over the place in terms of quality and utility. The muted trumpet sounded decent until I realized it was all from you adding expressive bits rather than the inherent sound. Sure it is free, but it lacks the dynamics of my 25-year old EMU sample-synth! Intriguing enough for me to check out though - I just joined the Roland Cloud and am trying to 'get with the new millennium' :)
hi michael, yeah, i would encourage you to try it out yourself if you are curious. as you say this just gives you a taste of the full version, but interesting and enjoyable anyway. some of the other free instruments in komplete players impressed me a lot more, so make sure to try those too.
Kontakt Free Player will also run quite a few of the more expensive sample packs which are Player compatible, so the full software isn't required. But Kontakt pack land is enormous, so its not always easy to find them all. And most Player compatible packs offer plenty of editing and tweaking options (incl ability to save your own patches or snapshots. Best time to buy full Kontakt (or Komplete, or any of the other instruments) is during NI's twice yearly sales when they often offer 50% off.
good advice Phil, thanks for chiming in!
As a come on, there is some reasonable stuff in that lot. I definitely wouldn't use any of those these days, but, for someone just getting into it, there's some stuff. As you note, you'll really want to shell out for the real deal if you want better and real fiddling with knobs and dynamics etc. I was spoilt when I first bought NI stuff, I ended up with an Ultimate version 8 I think off a chap on e-bay, been updating every time since. Current version, if you can afford it, is really something spectacular.
cool ebay score you got there! yeah, i see the kontakt player as an education, just to see if it works on your system, but for decent sounds you probably want to upgrade. now is a good time actually with some current deals.
Even though I have the full version of Kontakt 6 as well as NI's fantastic Abbey Road Drummer
Collection I still think the Factory Selection included all of Band's best samples like the basses,
organ and clavi. In the past I have used Factory Selection in Mixcraft with Mixcraft's stock VSTs
for things like saxophones and strings. But even though I bought the full version stand alone and
paid full price I still think the full version was a good investment especially considering there are
so many great freebies to load into Kontakt plus the full version allows you to create and script
your own Kontakt libraries.
First to comment! I loved Kontakt when I used Maschine, lost it when I sold the Studio but would love to check out this free player.
Great video and a fantastic intro.
Third party designers have to apply to NI to turn their libraries into official NI libraries that work on the free player. They also have to pay a substantial fee for this, I'm talking 1000's not 100's here, which is why many don't, and their libraries will only work in the full version....you have to select them through the 'files' menu, rather than the 'libraries' tab.
Regarding velocity, well that's all under the hood. The two little cogs you see in the top left corner of your instrument, become a spanner in the full version. You click it and you have access to everything....envelopes, modifiers(LFO etc), effects(reverb, filters etc) and of course, velocity strength. Of yea....and the main sampler of course :)
A tip for you Woody....rather than double clicking an NkI(Native Kontakt Instrument file) and then having to change midi channel, just drag n drop the new file over the current instrument.
thanks for the tip and for sharing the "inside info"
I enjoyed this video. it was definitely "Good Times!"
Im downloading it now Man....ok heres my deal. Im looking for a "Lap Steel Guitar VST" and the ONLY One(s) that seems to ever been created are from ORANGE TREE SAMPLES for example BUT Requirement is, must have like you said, Must have FULL Version of Kontact Komplete...yet thats like $600 USD...(That Aint gonna happen for me here anytime soon) Im still hoping though that somehow in HOPE AGAINST HOPE that I can rig something up to get that Sound of a Lap Steel Guitar. Thanks Man
The Komplete Kontack Klayer Kuniverse is Konfusing. I have been researching this for the last few weeks given the November discounts. Appreciate your video and the Sheik intro was good. The video gave me a better feel for what this is about. The Free sounds are not stellar so you saved me a ton of time here. I'll pass on Kontatk.
i thought the drum loops were great fun, but yeah, I hear you. i'm sure the sounds in the full version are improved, i certainly hope so anyway :)
Thanks again for the comprehensive and very fair review. The Kontact universe and sounds are just not for me. You saved me a ton of time also. Keep up the great work!
I was waiting for your other D-05 videos but I've gone ahead and bought one anyway :)
i don't think you'll regret it, have a couple more d-05 vids in the can, but was worried that the public would get bored of the d05 :)
.
Woody Piano Shack I won't, bring em on Woody!
I have had that bass line going round in my head for days because of this video...
It's driving me (and my girlfriend) potty 😂😂😂
Keep it up, Woody !
could that be the best bassline ever? i can't think of a better one right now...
That Duduk, whatever that is, is my fav one and really the only one I use from it.
That sound at 1:25 is really fantastic ! Can you please tell me what it is.Thank you in advance
Love it!
Great Stuff Woody.
Im diggin it Man! Groovy !
So, I'm going to get the Symphony Series - Collections (by Native Instruments) and I'm still confused on if I want the Kontakt Player or Kontakt, and I'm not gonna share my music I'll just listen to it myself.
nicely done woody,reminds me of my disco years,freak on,le freak c'est chique LOL
Sweet!
great....thanks for sharing
awesome!
Smooth intro. Can you dig it.
!!! A V E E E !!!LEGEND !!!
Can you tell me did it take a LONG TIME to "Configure" for both The NATIVE ACCESS And The Kontact 5?...Mine has been configuring for (approx) hours now...its like it stuck & it keeps on acting like its configuring, and theres no way to stop it unless I stop the complete process after all this time by means of The TASK MGR> whats a matter with it , can you help me. Thanks
i don't know exactly, i started it then went out for half a day.
I had the same issue. Tried to load guitar rig 5 and Kontakt. Took 3 weekends worth of tries, but it finally went through tonight.
The worse part of the Kontakt player isn't even that youre basically stuck with the stock sounds unless u wanna pay a fortune. But its that you can't even upload your own samples ans create ur own instrument in the free library.
I was underwelmed by Kontakt but had my socks blown off by Reaktor 6 that thing is insane. One of the few plugs I heard and wanted to spend money to keep and get more
Groovy
The part about the 3rd party stuff is not true. I recently bought a great library "Session keys electric R" and it didn't require me to buy Kontakt (I use the free version for a year now).
thanks SF, I guess it's a mixed bag then, certainly the libs I was interested in all required full version, for example, Emulator II OMI Universe of Sounds and the top selling Zero-G packs.
Woody Piano Shack
Interesting.
I'm also using many of the libs by NI as they support the free version too.
However, how did you run all the Kontakt instances in one window?
Tutorial, please :p
I always have one Kontakt instance for each instrument (RAM doesn't like that, tho).
i had multiple instruments running in one kontakt instance on a single track. i just double click on an preset and it opens right up as a new instrument in the kontakt rack on the next available midi channel. that's the default, right?
Woody Piano Shack Yes. But how do I adress which midi track plays which instance?
i was just changing the midi-channel that my keyboard was transmitting on during the demo, but for chic i just routed the midi of each track to the track that contained kontakt. and made sure that each midi-track was on different channels.
i like your style ❤🔥🔥
For a minute, I thought they were releasing the full version of Kontakt, but no it's the sh*ty Kontakt player which limits everything to 15 minutes. No way I'm paying 300 euros/pounds/dollars for a sample player, that's ridiculous.
You expect them to release the full version for free? And you don't pay 300 euros/pounds/dollars for a sample player, you pay for the full version which is a sampler. And if you're really clever you wait until this time of the year when everything is half price and buy Komplete. And it is bloody good value for what you get.
the 15 minute limitation only kicks in if you try and load 3rd party libraries that are only compatible with the full version,. It's a pity but there are no such limitations with the NI libraries.
Guitars from synths still sound crap :D After 50 years of synth development :D
Still a great chique groove!
You should seriously check out the Orange Tree guitar packs for Kontakt. www.orangetreesamples.com
had several guitar players raise their brows when hearing those. They are incredible close to the real thing considdered its still just a bunch of sampled articulations :)
And you can use them in so many ways eg switching art. with keys, or set it up to vel. switching to "easy" enhance a normal dull midi guitar track sound more than reasonable.
18:26 Down Under.... Nice :D
Another one bites the wood
Worth the viewing, even if just to see you gettin' down Woody. :D
haha, it's on the house:)
Sounds are maybe nice but i dont want to use sounds everyone else is using. So a no from me.
yeah, that's a tricky issue. but i figure that if two musicians use the same piano, they can still create different music...? maybe with some tweaking of the presets and innovative usage you can still get your own wound.
Tbh with you if u look at real instruments people usually choose the same brands and models. Everyone wants a stratocaster
ruclips.net/video/2ePHQYeJFfw/видео.html (
to everyone out there boycott NI ! 👎👎
Why?
It sounds terrible, unrial and fake
And it's free.
Jamie Bales yeah
The other Native Instruments libraries tend to have better sounds plus there are loads of 3rd party Kontakt libraries. I have this working in Mixcraft and I myself was very skeptical about getting the full version but it's different to other VST instruments and not as expensive as other VST sample libraries.