I've fallen in love...with a DXi called Kontakt!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul881
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dachay2tnr said:
I did use it as a DXi, and it worked fine. However, it also can be run standalone - which is what makes me think you can create the midi directly from inside Kontakt. (Or I could be dreaming. :) )
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This sounds harder to do than using it in Sonar...
 
Yeah, but I'm wondering how else could you use some of its features just on specific notes, rather than on the entire track?

I mean it seems to have a lot of capabilities to "alter" the sampled sounds. It seems limiting if you can only do this for an entire track. (Of course you could always create additional tracks, but that seems pretty cumbersome.)

Then again, maybe I just don't have my head completely wrapped around this yet - a distinct possibility. :D
 
The difference between a small sample and a large sample is...

In a sampler that uses small samples velocity or force of hits is done by simple volume envelopes,a real instrument such as drums or a piano sound different when hit at different velocities.Not every keyboard transmits velocity/aftertouch so you may have to use a utility such as Cakewalks velocity or enter velocity as you see fit.
Stacatto and sustained notes also are manipulated using artificial means in lesser samplers.In a Sampler like Giga you may have a sample for many different lengths of hits as opposed to looping or volume ennvelopes.Here again a natural note sounds different than a "altered" note.
Pitch in many cases in done by pitch shifting.In a sampler that handles large files you can have a sample for each note as well as each velocity and duration.In some large files every note you play is an actual non-manipulated recorded note.

A 5MB sample is going to sound the same in both samplers,the difference is you can't load a 500MB sample into a sound font player.
I have Giga piano which is outdated by todays standards and the sample size is 650MB.I have had many people listen to it and go away impressed.It easily blows away any of my JV synths piano sounds.

You can manipulate sounds in any sampler and you can get decent sounds using less than a MB but mostly synth stuff,you can't really touch the natural sounds.

Cyclone
I have used this to the point where I think I understand it pretty well.It's great for importing a groove enabled clip and manipulating the clip.If someone can explain to me how to make screenshots I can post a mini-lesson ala-James Argo's sound font lesson.This is a really useful tool if you got a great sounding loop that you'd like to get some variations out of.
 
Once again, thanks for the lesson AR. Makes sense to me.

And the size of these large sample files requires that these programs have to stream the data, since you can't hold that much in memory.

Now, another question, does Giga choose the sample it uses based on the duration of the midi note you have programmed? Or do you have to do that type of manipulation?
 
dachay2tnr said:
Now, another question, does Giga choose the sample it uses based on the duration of the midi note you have programmed? Or do you have to do that type of manipulation?
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Okay,I had to breakout my old Pro Suite manual because it actually does a better job of explaining sample mapping for Giga than their own manual.
another reason to get Kontakt over Giga......their support s-u-c-k-s!
In midi velocity is measured by a scale of 0 to 127.
Giga supports four velocity levels,either programmed by the user or the developer of the Gig files.
NOW......just because it supports four velocity levels it does not mean that there are four velocity levels programmed into the Gig file.It may have only one sound for all velocities 0 to 127.
Second as previously stated your keyboard must transmit different velocities for these samples to be triggered.

So IF the particular Gig file is velocity responsive AND your midi notes have varying velocities that correspond to these velocity ranges you will hear different samples/sounds.
Gigastudio comes with an instrument editor where you can tailor the settings to your liking.If the velocity range is not to your liking ...change it.

The problem with these more complex software programs is that they are so open ended.Much like Sonar it's not a question of how it works,but how do you want it to work?

You can map samples to be velocity sensitive,layered or to morph using the mod wheel or other midi controller.
You can map up to eight samples per note(stereo counting as two) giving you an ample amount of variations.
Giga also supprts filters,envelopes and all the other usual suspects.
The funny thing is that a lot of people probably will never use these programs as a sampler,but merely as an instrument leaving the heavy lifting of instrument development to the pros.

I have made instruments(?)just to see how it works and I'm sure anybody with skill and patience could make very good "Gigs" at home if they so desired.Me I download the freebies and buy the occasional sound online.If I ever get a program that works inside Sonar I may expand my library.
 
Doh!

You asked about duration!
Well just substitute duration for velocity and you get the picture.....
After touch might come into play here.
 
Little did I realise when I started this thread that it would have 45 posts. It shows that making synth music is definately on the up.

Acid, that was a great tutorial, how did you learn all this stuff? I am trying to get my head around even simple midi concepts and realise how much I don't know.

BTW, I have (again) have had to remove Gigastudio from my system as it interferes with my other programs too much. Especially m/soft Word:eek:

Went gone back to the shop last night for another look @ Kontakt. I am going for it!
 
Keep us posted, Paul. I tried last night to make sounds using the Kontakt supplied samples (rather than with sound fonts) and I had no luck at all. In fact I don't even understand the names of the samples supplied - Organ A2, Organ A3, Organ D2...

It would appear that they refer to the notes and their specific octaves, but how can you have a sample that is just one note? IOW, if I sent a midi track to a Kontakt DXi, I would need more than one note, right? Or do I have to load the entire Organ library first (which didn't seem to comprise a full scale - but that may be because it's a demo)?

Using the sound fonts, I just loaded one file (e.g., smooth brass) and it played fine.

I'm sooooo :confused:
 
Dachay, I do't understand that either. When I had a go at the shop last night, I loaded Kontakt samples (from 1 to 8 meg) and played them from the midi controller as I would s/fonts and they played accross the keyboard. It also allowed me to load several samples and to play them back at the same time, multi voice, multi instrument (I probably got that wrong, but hell, I'm new to this too).

You obviously got some bum samples there, or I don't know enough abouit it to comment.

I got a found this tutorial on the web. I haven't had chance to read it yet, so I can't vouch for its value. It was on www.worldofsampling.uk. It looked like a useful site, I only found it yesterday lunchtime.

Dachay, you have to believe me, the samples I heard were really something else. And soooooo easy to load up and use, even I did it:D
 
Dachay, I seem to remember something about dragging the wav file over the on screen keyboard to map it. When you import your wav sample, in the mapping window, it will highlight the note that you imported i.e. Organ A. If you drag this highlight over the onscreen k/b, it will automatically map it to those notes. If this is incorrect info, I apologise, I'm trying to do this from memory. And we all know that I don't have the best brain in the world to start with:) Let me know if this works or not.
 
The Kontakt wav files are individual samples. There are a number of instruments that are also supplied, and these are .nki files. Load these using the Load pulldown button towards the top of the screen. This will load in a mapped set of sample wav files - ie they are already allocated to note ranges on the keyboard. Also several of the instruments are velocity mapped as well - hitting the note harder triggers a different sound. Check out the mapping screen after loading...

It can take a little time to load some of the instruments, and eat a lot of RAM - the full piano is over 200M! You can try the instruments with 'S' in the name as these are optimised for smaller memory usage - less samples used overall.

Its not obvious and it took me a few goes before the penny dropped.

Good lock, and enjoy
 
Thanks Paul and Shuggy. Paul, I will look at the tutorial you suggested and see if it helps.

When I open Kontakt (as a DXi) the Kontackt screen is basically split into three sections. The upper left is something of an Explorer function and allows you to search for sample libraries (not sure of my terminology here).

Once you find a sample library that you wish to use, if you double click on it, you get a bunch of individual samples that show up in the bottom left part of the screen. In my case, this is where Organ A2, Organ A3, etc., showed up.

The last step is to click and drag the sample into the right part of the screen, which loads it as an instrument. However, when I did this with Organ A2 for ex., and then played the midi file I got no sound whatsoever. So what I'm wondering is, do I need to drag ALL the samples to right half of the screen?

When I did the same steps as above using a Sound Font, I just needed to load a single instrument (e.g., smooth brass) and everything played fine. Is that because the sound font samples have multiple notes within them, whereas the Kontakt samples are just single notes?

Its not obvious and it took me a few goes before the penny dropped.
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As you can see, Shug, the penny hasn't landed here yet. :)
 
Look Out!! Pennies are falling :)

Here's the deal. Apparently Kontakt works with definition files (*.nkm if I recall properly). The definition files are comprised of a series of *.wav files. So my problem was that I was trying to load the wave files, when I should have been loading the instrument definition files (which are made up of all the waves associated with that instrument).

So now after all that, I am only able to play a song for < 1 second before I get dropouts, and I get crackling in the sound for the brief duration that it plays.

This is the old software/hardware leapfrog effect. Had I never gotten into computer recording, I would probably still be happy with my 200 MHz P2 with 64 MB RAM and a 5400 HDD. However, PA9 (and later Sonar) caused me to upgrade to my current 733 MHz P3 with 512 RAM and 2 X 7200 RPM HDD's. (The software leapfrogged the hardware and caused me to upgrade my hardware.)

Now here comes Kontakt - and we're playing leapfrog again. If I had been bitten by the bug as bad as Paul, I would probably now be trying to figure out ways to dump the P3 for some 2.+ GHz machine.

However, my very brief ability to taste test Kontakt was not enough to get me to reach for my Visa. What I heard sounded like it could be quite nice - but I couldn't REALLY tell.

Now I could go down to the local music store and check it out, but I'm not that stupid. I ALREADY KNOW HOW THAT WOULD END UP.

Thanks for the help guys, but for now I am retiring my Kontakt demo. When other forces cause me to upgrade my CPU, I might come calling again.
 
Dachay, you'll be back.:) It will gnaw and pull at you when you lie in your bed at night. You know what you have to do. Go do it:D
 
Be careful now - the .nkm files are multi-instrument files - ie a set of .nki definitions - effectively giving you a performance across a set of midi channels, or allowing you to create some really fat sounds by layering. Pulling in several instrument definitions, each neediong somewhere between 40 and 200M would certainly do BAD things to my PC, so not surprised you saw issues...

Oh well, let us know when you take the plunge!
 
Thanks for the heads up, Shuggy. I may have one more go at it, iusing just the .nki files. I don't recall seeing any .nki files among the demo stuff, but I may not have looked hard enough.

I did notice that when I loaded the .nkm file for the Organ I got three separate instruments.

Do you happen to know how to remove an instrument that has been loaded? You can drag them into Kontakt, but I don't seem to be able to drag them out. IOW, if I load the .nkm file, but want to remove "some" of the instruments that load, can I do that? Or is it all or nothing when you work with an .nkm?

Paul, you are getting awfully smug for a guy who just upgraded from an Atari 1200. :D At this point my machine is not as dated as yours was, but I already know that day is not far off. :(
 
Click on it, but not on one of the controls on it. You will then see a thick orange (brown?) border around the instrument, press Delete- and its gone.

You can also use the Load/Remove button at the top.

Boy - the power of being page ahead in the manual - this is going to my head! Slap me someone.... :D
 
Boy - the power of being page ahead in the manual -
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Ah, so you've been cheating. :D

Around these parts, we dun need no steenkin manuals.

BTW, I got as far as getting the border, but then didn't know what to do with it. :)
 
Paul, you are getting awfully smug for a guy who just upgraded from an Atari 1200
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Listen, I have had to put up with you and "our pals" telling me that my puter should have been in a museum and how an Abacus would compute faster, so cut me a little slack here will ya, Let me enjoy being a "technology leader" for a while:D Cos it won't last.

On this subject, I have taken a step back and decided to look at Reason and the new P5 from Cakewalk. From the reviews I have read of the prototype, it looks like P5 could be a very interesting proposition.
 
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