Kontakt player?

[Goit]

The cost of player-based libraries vs instrument-only - NI User Forums

In reality, if you already own Kontakt, your purchase of Kontakt Player libraries has always subsidized those customers who don't have Kontakt.

Is this still the case? If so the situation looks worse for buying the full K5 now, because a much bigger portion of the stuff out there now license the player. So unless people are upgrading buying the full K5 seems to yield very little in return.

[PaPi61]

Well, it's pretty obvious that if you don't sample and/or assemble your own libraries with pre-recorded material, there goes one of the most important reasons to own the full version of K5. On the other hand, consider that relatively few third-party libraries actually work with the Kontakt Player, and these tend to be the most expensive. There's a world out there of thousands of Kontakt "instruments" that require the full version, and a lot of that is either low-cost of free.

Bottom line, the full version is still worth the money.

[Goit]

Originally Posted by PaPi61

Well, it's pretty obvious that if you don't sample and/or assemble your own libraries with pre-recorded material, there goes one of the most important reasons to own the full version of K5.

The sampler is not for users creating their own libraries, just like Microsoft should not expect every user of Windows to start writing their own programs for personal use. The functionality is there, but that's not what the software is meant to demand, otherwise windows would be relegated to the pros. You can't expect composers/musicians to all know how to script/record/compile.

[PaPi61]

Originally Posted by Goit

The sampler is not for users creating their own libraries, just like Microsoft should not expect every user of Windows to start writing their own programs for personal use. The functionality is there, but that's not what the software is meant to demand, otherwise windows would be relegated to the pros. You can't expect composers/musicians to all know how to script/record/compile.

No, but you can still use the sample editor to assemble a multi-sample patch from pre-recorded material. Kontakt makes it extremely easy. I'm a composer, not a sound engineer, and I do it all the time. Actually, I also did it when I had half a dozen E-mu sampler and it was neither quick nor pretty.

[Goit]

Originally Posted by PaPi61

There's a world out there of thousands of Kontakt "instruments" that require the full version, and a lot of that is either low-cost of free.

Where are they? Most of them I see are either very old or are insignificant.

Most major products today like the LASS or SAM are all player based. (or pretty much any orchestral string library)

[PaPi61]

Originally Posted by Goit

Where are they? Most of them I see are either very old or are insignificant.

Most major products today like the LASS or SAM are all player based. (or pretty much any orchestral string library)

NI products are all compatible with the player. And expensive libraries like LASS. Outside of those, even Spitfire isn't compatible with the player, let alone smaller sample companies like Boulder Sounds. I was told it costs something like $7,000 in licensing fees to make a sample library compatible with the player.

[kgdrum_nyc]

+1 agree
It is much cheaper for a smaller sample library developer to produce a library that will work in Kontakt( full ) most of the better libraries from independent developers do not come with the Kontakt player built in, they are designed to be utilized in conjunction w/ Kontakt.
Much less associated cost for a smaller developer.

[Goit]

Originally Posted by PaPi61

Outside of those, even Spitfire isn't compatible with the player

Their expensive ones are. But you are right about their solo strings at least, and I'm already planning on getting that over the VSL solo strings.

So apparently I bought K4 just for this and a selection from the Westgate Modular series. And I still need to update this thing to K5 but NI is not happy about sales this year. Well, still much cheaper than going full blown VSL.

Boulder Sounds.

That's what I mean by "insignificant". The majority of them look like gimmicks. And most of these indie libraries don't require Kontakt's scripting engine, so they also offer EXS/Halion editions. (or pretty much any free sampler because their contents are usually not locked and are easy to translate to any format)

I was told it costs something like $7,000 in licensing fees to make a sample library compatible with the player.

So how large is this sampling market? Most coding kits cost a lot more than that to license.

Large music companies like Image-Line and Antares really sell a lot of units so I suppose the 7k should be a negligible amount if companies like Project SAM sells even a fraction of their volume?

This sampling business looks greedier than Walmart.

[Jeff Hayat]

Originally Posted by PaPi61

I was told it costs something like $7,000 in licensing fees to make a sample library compatible with the player.

Not sure where you got that number from; there is no one number that can be linked to the encoding and release of an NI product. If you want accurate info on the subject, have a look here:

v.i. control forum • View topic - Bela D is switching to ENGINE 2 [ Guest ]

Specifically post # 14 by Ben H, # 16 by RiffWraith (me) and Mike Greene's post at the top of p2.

Cheers.

[Goit]

Originally Posted by Jeff Hayat

Not sure where you got that number from; there is no one number that can be linked to the encoding and release of an NI product. If you want accurate info on the subject, have a look here:

v.i. control forum • View topic - Bela D is switching to ENGINE 2 [ Guest ]

Specifically post # 14 by Ben H, # 16 by RiffWraith (me) and Mike Greene's post at the top of p2.

Cheers.

Originally Posted by BenH

Kontakt *was* the de facto standard... and still is to a large extent.

What is your opinion on this? So Kontakt is already past its heyday? Just a year ago when I first ventured into this sampling business everyone was saying that Kontakt was a must.

So what happens if Kontakt does indeed go down? Many Gigastudio products are now effectively non-functional because their developers abandoned them along with the sampler.

I suppose a lot of the more important products like SAM will adapt, but for smaller companies I don't know if they may even go under together with the sampler.....

[Jeff Hayat]

Kontakt is not past its heyday - it IS the standard. There is nothing on the market that comes close in terms of flexability and features. Trust me - it's not going anywhere.

Cheers.

[Goit]

How is the factory soundset organized in Kontakt 5? Can you still install just one module like the choir or do you have to install everything now?

[Goit]

Resurrecting this. In the same thread, Peter Alexander says:

If it's NOT encoded, it gets pirated overnight. THAT IS TRUE!

So to avoid that, a developer MUST pay, usually in advance, for a player. Regardless of the company, encoding is based on size, number of copies projected to be sold, etc. I costed it out for a client a few years back and it came in at what I said.

But on another forum they say samples get pirated less because people can tell if a released album contains samples from some library. (at least the developer of that library can) So that's like a natural deterrence towards sample pirating vs software pirating.

So long story short just like what it says on the NI thread, people who are paying for Kontakt are subsidizing the Kontakt player users.

The most important thing to remember is that these days over 90 percent of the heavily-scripted libraries (i.e. can not be easily emulated by feeding the raw recordings into some other sampler) are player based. ("these days" means new/current stuff, not kontakt 2 stuff from half a decade ago)

[Tui]

Get over it, people. NI continues to put a lot of effort into Kontakt, and they want to be compensated. Big deal.

I finally got the full version over christmas, half price. It was totally worth it.

[Goit]

Originally Posted by Tui

I finally got the full version over christmas, half price. It was totally worth it.

You do realize that people who just need an upgrade got no discount at all, and all have to pay the same price regardless whether if you have kontakt 1 or 4 right?

And that they are pulling kontakt from the store shelves because they don't want any potential reseller to compete with their store?

and they want to be compensated.

By exacting that compensation from the wrong crowd as long as they feel it's convenient?