Sampling in Kontakt 3 Please!

Guner, please maintain a friendly and respectful style of discussion as requested in the forum rules refered below. Thanks!

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/forum_de/rules.php

 

Wow.

What makes DD's posts illegitimate? How is it rude to voice your opinion?

Someone posted their request, and someone else (including myself) posted how they would not like this feature to be implemented. It is only fair to see both sides of the issue.

I would rather see NI focus their time on different aspects of the software and it is important for them to know that....just as important as them knowing what you want.

Reading over DD's posts and yours, you are the only one sounding rude. He gives intelligent reasons for why he does not like the suggestion, and that is what the suggestion forum is for. You know MODs are product users as well. Disagreeing is not necessarily being dismissive.

BTW, I was the one who cherry picked the definition, not David. I am not a MOD.

 

I would love to have actual sampling in K3 instead of using another software application to record and then drag-n-drop into K3. I just want one product to record my samples, slice them up (without crashing), and map them to multiple keys. What would be the harm in having one software product to do this?

I looked at other alternatives but have yet to find a sampling software application to fit my needs. I believe Emu has what I need but it appears that you will have to use their hardware, if I am not mistaken. If anyone knows of an application that will fit my sampling needs, please let me know.

Speaking of audio editors..I have been trying to use Wave Lab 6 with K3. However, when I launch it within K3, the audio playback is distorted. I have no issues with using Wave Lab as a standalone product.

 

Guys, can we not just agree to agree that the reason Kontakt has no sampling functionality is due to market forces. 99% of the market of today is a combination of home users wanting to play any instrument they want via a midi keyboard and a prebuilt library in Kontakt, and professional tv and film composers who also use predominantly third party prebuilt sample libraries for their sounds. The people who sample their own new sounds for editing and sound design are probably in the 1%-5% and are not likely to see these kind of tools added to Kontakt which is, essentially a very complex library playback application.

What is slightly disturbing though are the arguments against adding sampling features to Kontakt. Essentially what the 'requesters' are being told is that they'd be distracting Kontakt's developers from more important issues such as fixing bugs, or that they'd be adding bloat to the application.

Forgive me for my ignorance but I had thought it could be possible to add features, fix bugs and constrain bloat all at the same time.

Anyway there are other applications that do sampling, such as the Redmatica tools and Samplit. The main question is if they can export to .NKI and can they do it quickly and painlessly. I still think these guys are missing a trick by not making a sampling tool that operates as an audio plugin. Being able to 'sample' wherever you can insert a VST would be highly flexible, allowing direct resampling of Kontakts output or any audio channel in your DAW or editor. But then what do I know I'm not a software developer, maybe there's a fundamental reason that a tool like that can't be built due to computer keys made from peanut butter or something.

 

Extreme Sample Converter can sample any vst automatically. Just load the VST, setup a map and it records it DIGITALLY, to hard disk. I don't know if you guys are trying to sample hardware or what, but I've been wanting to sample vst's to get my sounds into Kontakt as a kind of consolidation effort.

 

Yeah I'm aware about the VST autosampling feature there, Xlutop Chainer has a similar facility where it will 'bounce' all the keys of a loaded vst to wavs with a specified sample length in seconds.

this is pretty useful if you want to hard code a vst into samples and edit it further in Kontakt.

The thing I was suggesting above was a different idea, that of a VST plugin that can be inserted anywhere, and it samples whatever audio it is recieving, while still passing the audio through. this would allow you for example, to insert the VST on the master buss of your daw and quickly sample anything that you are hearing, from VST instruments to recorded audio tracks or the entire mix. You could also use it on live input channels to sample whatever audio hardware, guitar drums keyboards mics, you have in the studio.

 

KFY I'm not sure I follow you. How is this different from what any DAW can already do in terms of bouncing and recording? I am definitely one who strongly feels that Kontakt should be able to sample - but I mainly see the need in the context of a standalone, software based sampling workstation. Outside the realm of the DAW. Once you're in a DAW - you can already do what you're suggesting (if I understand you correctly) better and easier with the DAW's bounce and record functions.

 

I think you missed the point of my description. I've gone into deeper detail in another big request post regarding Sampling in kontakt. The point being that a Daw will only bounce, a dedicated Kontakt sampling plugin could take all the work out of full creation of instruments. If you for example wanted to sample all 60 keys of a vintage midi instrument with 4 velocity layers, doing this with Wavelab or a DAW recording would involve a raft of careful edits, naming, file management, taking hours.

With a 'clever' VSTi you could insert it in your DAW, and select from some editable sampling defaults. One might be velocity layers for keyboard instruments. In the same way that Kontakt3 has the 'drag and drop' midi, you could drag and drop default sampling midi such as 1 to 60 keys of one velocity, 1 to 60 of the next velocity etc, or you could have the VSTi directly send by itself. The VST would record exactly the correct lengths of notes specified and trim and cut precisely, dumping the waves into a Kontakt instrument. If you have Kontakt open it can sync with the instrument being built. The sampling plugin can be inserted anywhere meaning you could for example have noise gates and compression on the input channel to clean up what you are recording. etc

The overall point is that many sampling jobs are similar. Sampling into Wavelab or recording plain audio tracks in Cubase and exporting, cutting and pasting and naming, these are all stupid time consuming tasks that make creation of Kontakt instruments take hours instead of minutes. The plugin would take care of cutting, auto naming, saving as .nki, even meta normalising levels between samples for one range.

My reasoning for suggesting the plugin is that it can independently offer a great deal of sampling power and tools, but keep the moaners happy who don't want to see Kontakt3 itself bloated further. It's clear that with a single Kontakt3 instance using 160mb of RAM before you'd even loaded an instrument, adding a range of sampling features will just make this unreasonable figure much larger. Why have the sampling open at all when you go through a month of purely playing back or editing existing work?

I have to say I'm with you that Kontakt should have sampling built in, including the standalone. But as long as the chorus of voices saying that the sampler shouldn't sample is louder than those asking for it, I'm just suggesting alternatives that might make at least a few folk happy.

 

So..there are a few of us that would like Kontakt to actually sample. While we wait, are there other software samplers on the market that actually sample?

 

The E-Mu does. But unfortunately you need the E-Mu hardware in your computer to use it, even though it's not running on DSP it's simply a native VSTi and standalone. The other issue is that the E-Mu is Windows only.

People have been asking for sampling in Kontakt since version 1. The reasons for not including it seem to be more ideological than technical.

*shrug*

 

No, there aren't any that I know of - and since you have to use the E-MU's hardware I wouldn't be inclined to call it a true softsampler any more than I would be inclined to call Kontakt a true samplER. At least not in it's current incarnation. There are NO real softsamplers out there. None. It's uncharted territory IMHO.

KFY, I think you're asking for all the kinds of things David Das is worried about. I'm definitely not thinking in terms of complex autosampling scripts etc. I'd be thrilled to just start with the basics. The fundamental ability to RECORD using Kontakt in standalone would be all I'm looking for. For now, the rest of what I want from a sampler is already there in K3.

As for the fine Redmatica tools, (all of which I have and use) much of what you've described (though not all of it) can be done with them AND Kontakt can read and load the resulting EXS files.

 

The only hardware you gotta use for EMUX2 is a dongle type usb midi or their keyboards (at leasts these dongles are useful). Yeah the Emux2 has basic sampling input and a little window to quickly map ur samples. I'd definitely call EMUX2 a true softsampler and more.

Hopefully with the implementation of the wav editor kontakt can move into a basic sampling mode. Baby steps, etc.

 

Now EMUX2 is exactly what I need! I just came from Emu's site and downloaded their demo video and manual. EMUX2's sampling and sample editing functions are the features that I expect to see in any product calling itself a sampler..hint, hint...Kontakt 3.

Guner, you have just sold me on this software. Is there any other software "samplers" that has similar functions to EMUX2?

Doing more research....EMUX2 beat out Kontakt 2 at the 2007 Musikmesse International Press Awards for best sampler...

 

...I would also like to see sampling features in Kontakt, but it's not the no.1 feature on my wishlist (KORE browser for christ's sake!). But to paint a different picture here (and to show some alternatives), I can create multi-sample instruments very easy using Extreme Sample Converter (both for hardware and software instrument and very cheap) or I could use the free Voxengo Recorder (a VST plug-in that simply records the output of one channel) or - very easy in Ableton Live, for instance - you could use the host's recording feature. Even creating multi-samples is very easy in Ableton Live - create one clip per note in one track and hit freeze (the samples can be found in your respective project folder). Cubase also allows the export of single tracks and I'm sure other hosts do as well. So you wouldn't even need to cut a bunch of samples (even if so, Recycle is a great tool for this, the free app WaveKnife, too) - all you'd need to do for one time is creating a respective template in your host (and I want to see that power user that wants to record 127 notes with 127 velocity zones ). It's not really so complicated that such complaining would be justified - to me it rather seems a matter of creativity about using already existing tools. After recording/exporting the files you could use some free renamng tool like Lupas Rename then and let the auto-mapping in K3 do the rest. Or, if you just have recorded one file - I mean, dragging a single sample from your OS browser into Kontakt's mapping editor really isn't a big deal. And the discussion whether Kontakt may be called a softsampler or not due to lacking sampling features is a bit nitpicking...

 

Let me be so bold and speak for the guys that want actual sampling.....

We really don't need a lesson on the work arounds but thanks for the tutorial anyway. We are fully aware that you can record into our DAWs (Pro Tools, Cubase/Nuendo, Logic, Sonar, Digital Performer) and drag/drop the recorded audio/samples into faux samplers like Kontakt and Battery or sample editing programs like Recycle, Wave Lab, etc. In fact, I have all of these programs. Now...go to www.emu.com to check out the Emulator X2 or check out this tutorial: http://www.emu.com/support/files/storage/twist_loop_full.asx

The X2 has now replaced my need for Kontakt, Recycle, and perhaps Battery as well and I don't have to open up my DAW. Why? Because the X2 can record audio/sample like my DAW or Wave Lab, chop up the sample like Recycle, and then create instrument/presets/keymap like Kontakt. All of this in one product. Now this is a big deal. This is among the reasons why some of us want actual sampling in K3.

Again, this thread was about the people that want actual sampling and not the ways we have to workaround using what we have.

 

...actually, when people ask for a feature it's often this way that they need a solution quickly. It's not very likely that we see a sampling feature before v.4. Given that two years for a new update (see Absynth, Battery, Kontakt, Guitar Rig) has become the usual period for NI products people will have a long way ahead - I was just trying to be constructive.

But I stick to it - the lack of sampling features isn't Kontakt's greatest handicap at all. I guess, most people want to focus on making music rather than sampling. I think, we have to distinguish between two categories of users. On the one hand people that do some "creative" sampling - resampling, sound design and such. These people won't create many samples - usually one and they would rather use it in the context of their composition as this sampling is part of their musical work. And again, recording or bouncing one or a few files in my host and dragging these from the browser into Kontakt is not a big deal. In fact, usually I would process these samples with some additional fx that I even don't have in Kontakt.
And I don't think there is much use for a hobbyist/musician to sample some presets of his software or hardware synth extensively. The freezing features and the hardware integration of many hosts have become so good, that it's rather a waste of time trying to create multi-sample instruments from these, instead of recording or bouncing your synth phrase and concentrating on your composition.
However, the other group would be developers of large multi-sample instruments and they would need a good audio editing ennviroment with batch processing tools and such more than Kontakt's little sample editor.

Since you already know the workarounds I mentioned and since you are very happy with the X2, I guess there isn't much for you to worry about. I'd be happy about that. In fact, you might also realise a small profit since selling Kontakt, Battery and Recycle might bring you more money than your X2 had actually cost...

 

So sampling, slicing, and looping my own synth sounds or vinyl into a convenient kontakt instrument isn't considered "making music"? You must know that sampling has been the basis of modern electronic music since the 80s , etc and it still is...But, I'm not here to get into that..I own harware synths and tons of vinyl, I'm just looking for an integrated sampling solution that allows me to sample my own sound. I'm glad K3 has an audio editor so I don't have to switch back and forth from my audio editor and kontakt. See, kontakt is about convenience, and workflow, not workarounds.

What he said.

 

Kontakt's greatest handicap? Can't we just keep to the topic of the thread? I wasn't trying to bring up the fact the Kontakt 3 in it's current state is often not reliable doing the things it's advertised to do. Yes, I drap and drop samples (because I have no choice..it doesn't sample) into Kontakt. Then using it's editor and keymapping features...it crashes frequently. Yes, I reported the "bug" and NI confirmed it. That is it's current greatest handicap for me. Oh...and Kontakt is suppose to integrate with 3rd Party sample editors...but when I use it with WaveLab 6, it distorts the audio..another handicap.

Back to the topic.

But after that, they need to work on.....you know already.

 

...your question would have been answered if you hadn't cut my quote after the first sentence - I think, my following statements about different types of users have answered your question already well enough. In fact, I sample a lot myself - especially breaks in the recent months (check my sig) and I know that Kontakt's editing features don't allow the convenience and workflow that other editors do. For instance, the beat machine doesn't allow to mute slices. If you like to sample a lot of vinyl one solution for getting rid of pops (apart from using denoising plug-ins that Kontakt also don't offer) would be muting this tiny bit in Recycle and covering this little gap with the stretched tail of the previous slice. This isn't possible in Kontakt. Version 1 and 2 had a feature to stretch the slices, but the sound quality was so poor that they seem to have dropped this feature (at least I can't find it in v.3). If you also have v.2 you can compare Recycle and Kontakt (2) like this - slice a loop in both programs, set the stretch factor in Recycle to 100%, set the factor of the Artificial Stretch Release in Kontakt to 100% before mapping the slices to groups and compare the sound of the slices of both versions - the result will speak for itself (no wonder they have dropped this). However, Kontakt features the beat machine and REX-Import since v.1.5 - still the beat machine isn't as good as Recycle and still the Rex-Format isn't imported properly with all its features - that would be something the developers should focus on!

Guys, I'm not denying the usefulness of a sampling option, but I'm not religious about it and I know it simply won't replace the need for other, more sophisticated editors. Kontakt's own sample editor is still very poor and offers a clumsy handling - lacking of right-click context menus and short-cuts, for instance. Implementing those would speed up my workflow, but complaining about that is indeed nitpicking. However, even if I can sample directly into Kontakt I will still need to open other editors - hence my example with Recycle. There would be other examples, too - processing samples,for instance. I'm quite sure you also will have to use external editor, so it's questionable if a sampling option will disatisfy you even more. However, we won't see such a feature before 2009 anyway, so I for one will fit my workflow to the existing circumstances and it works pretty well (I'm sorry to hear that it doesn't for you).

...I think, I was...

...sorry to hear. I have no problems with that, but I'm still using WL4 - it's software, it's working differently on different machines though it's actually not supposed to...

 

loachm, I can't see the logic in you debating with a few guys that want actual sampling in a feature request thread for that specific purpose. Are you bored? You should continue to create your own specific threads to talk about features you want.