What is your favourite sampler

[jamie_drum]

What do you think is the best sampler for use in Sonar, considering both features and stability?

 

[SPINSTERWUN]

Native Instruments Battery

http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?battery_us

 

[DEKAmusic]

Kontakt for me all the way. Easy to use, loads of features and works faultlessly in Sonar 3.

 

[pennylink]

I use Native Instrument's Kompakt.

Great sounding intstrument, high-quality sample library, less tweakability than Kontakt which I personally prefer (more time playing, less time tweaking), easy to use and affordable.

 

[Sklathill]

I use VSampler and I really enjoy it. I've only used GigaStudio and hardware samplers in the past, admittedly, but Vsampler and a bunch of my converted Halion and Giga libraries seem to do the trick.

 

[James Argo]

Vsampler because that's the only one I have But I tried Gigastudio and I think it works better on powerfull machine...

 

[Paul881]

Kompakt/kontakt...no question. Battery is okay, but needs an update, I prefer to use kontakt to load my drum samples rather than Battery,

Gigastudio pales by comparison to either of the Kontakt/kompakt pair.

 

[moskus]

DS404 is free!

 

[acidrock]

Kompakt.The sounds that come with it are worth the price alone.
Works great with Sonar too.

 

[jamie_drum]

Kompakt/kontakt...no question. Battery is okay, but needs an update, I prefer to use kontakt to load my drum samples rather than Battery,

Gigastudio pales by comparison to either of the Kontakt/kompakt pair.

What exactly is the difference between Kontakt and Kompakt? I know that Kompakt is supposedly the "lite" version, but what features exactly do you lose? Do they both import soundfonts?

DS-404 is okay but I hate that interface with the buttons and the knobs.

 

[moskus]

DS-404 is okay but I hate that interface with the buttons and the knobs.

Yes, I'll give you that. The interface on DS404 needs improvement.

But let's do a price-comparison...

 

[acidrock]

What exactly is the difference between Kontakt and Kompakt?

About $100

For the complete list go to the Native instruments website.
Kompakt has all of the basic tweaking tools,eq,envelopes etc.It's been said on multiple forums that the soundset that comes with Kompakt is actually better than the one that comes with Kontakt.
Kontakt has more tools for making sounds,twisting and warpiong them.
If you are a tweakhead go for Kontakt.
If you just want a quality sample player go for Kompakt.

 

[pennylink]

What exactly is the difference between Kontakt and Kompakt? I know that Kompakt is supposedly the "lite" version, but what features exactly do you lose? Do they both import soundfonts?

Yes, they both import soundfonts, as well as most other common formats (as mentioned before, see NI's website for comparison).

Although I'm a satisfied Kompakt user, it's worth mentioning that Kompakt does not import Kontakt instruments as smoothly as you would think, as it tends to loose some of its settings. Also, there is no "undo" function when you're mapping an instrument, so if you make a mistake, you have to erase what you've done so far and start from scratch. Apart from those two inconveniences, I love it.

 

[punkrawkn]

am i late to the party?

i dont know if its the BEST sampler(s), but i find myself going to Reason more often from Sonar. both the NN-XT and the NN19 are solid samplers and, if you use Reason alot and know the mods for it, makes things simple. i just open Reason as its own track in Sonar and load up what i want to use...

 

[Disposable]

Kompakt/kontakt...no question. Battery is okay, but needs an update, I prefer to use kontakt to load my drum samples rather than Battery,

Gigastudio pales by comparison to either of the Kontakt/kompakt pair.

Battery 2 comes out in November.

 

[tombuur]

VSampler. Got the full version. I about a month ago I was looking to get another more established sampler, after all you do invest a lot of time in learning to use a certain program so ... But I found that VSampler was the most versatile. You can use it as GM player, and I sometimes need that. You can insert VST effects. And I found that soundwise it is one of the best. There are some tests you can do, and several of the established samplers performed poorly (that included Kontakt).

Haven't heard the Kompakt library that I think looks interesting. But I played for an hour or two with Sampletank II in a music shop. In fact I almost bought it when I found out about their stupid copy protection scheme. Due to bad experience with a program using the same I wouldn't take the risk. 3 installs and your money is gone forever.