Most "Well-Rounded" Soft Synth Sampler - SS2? ST2? Kontakt 2? Kompakt?

mrbowes

New member
Looking for the soft synth sampler package that offers the most well-rounded set of high quality samples.

This is an economic decision as I cannot afford to buy more than two quality ($200-400 each, although money saved is money earned, so help me save here) software packages at the moment, and one of those is Cubase SX 3.

Most importantly, I want good synths/keys, strings/orchestra, drums/loops, percussion, ambient tones(although not a big factor - got a k2000), strings, and most likely anything i'm not thinking of right now - I want the whole schebang!

I've looked into the following:

Sonik Synth 2 - nice demo. had some good synths, but did not offer much else besides synth and bass pads.

Kontakt 2 - looks extensive. new product, so not much on it yet. 15GBs! anyone here with experience? i have not found a demo.

Kompakt - heard good things about it, but have yet to try it out. opinions?

Sampletank 2XL - have yet to get the demo working, but looks like SS2 w/ more emphasis on strings/non-synths. thoughts?

Others???

GAS'ing hardcore for a killer software synth that does it all good, if not great.
 
SS2/ST2 are venerable ROMpler's but are closed-ended for adding new sounds (You can import AKAI to ST2 but the mapping procedure sucks, and you are limited with what you can do). I have Kontakt 1, and it rock's. It is easily one of the biggest workhorses in my studio, and version 2 has even more new features. I plan to upgrade. It is without a doubt one of the most comprhensive samplers around. GigaStudio is cool too.
 
I'd like to know what is the best soft sampler to invest in too. I'm using Pro Tools and need high quality piano, keys, orchestra, ethnic and other 'real' sounds. The synthy stuff and effects I can live without as I tend to use reason a lot.

My limited knowledge is thus;

Sampletank reeks. 'S okay but not flexible enough.

Sonic Synth is more of a synth than a sampler. What exactly is it you want? If both, Reason might be a good option as it's stable, flexible and fun and easy to use.

Kontakt 2 is supposed to be utterly awesome. Huge library of great sounds and infinite flexibility. Might be more than you need in fact.

Kompakt is a smaller version of Kontakt, check out the differences and see what suites you best.

For me, I'm basically looking at either Kontakt 2 or MOTU's Mach 5, both of which seem to be the daddy as far as soft samplers are concerned. Can anyone recommend another of this kind of quality or give me advice on these two as regards to working in PT?

Incidentally, Gigastudio is also supposed to be a towering giant among samplers, but as it's recommend that you run it on it's own, dedicated PC, that's not an option for me right now.

Cheers,

the tortoise
 
I like Kontakt for its sound shaping abilities. I find it to be a very flexible sampler, and it's modular approach suits me rather well. However, as I almost never use supplied libraries, I can't comment on it. So, for sheer sound shaping ability, I'd recommend it over any of the other samplers and ROMplers mentioned (including Gigastudio which is one of the weakest in that regard).

P.S... got a K2600XS here... I find that between it and Kontakt I'm rather covered. :) In fact, if you're heavy on VAST programming, you'd appreciate the modular approach in Kontakt.
 
1/2 a year later, and I'm still saying, "KONTAKT RULES". However I did have a chance to check out the newest version of Halion (3), it's OK too. Halion actually has some really nice Waldorf filters. But I'm still gonna recommend Kontakt.
 
Well, after some research I see that the Mach 5 comes with 4GB of samples whilst Kontakt 2 comes with 14GB!

It's supposed to be about 100 quid dearer, but I just found a place doing an offer of the whole sampler, plus another extra library, for 200 pounds!!! :eek:

Needless to say, I'm rushing out to buy it after the 15th (next PRS distribution) ;)

Dead chuffed.
 
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