General Kontakt Questions

[Senso]

Just purchased SC, and have a few basic program questions…any thoughts on this will be appreciated.

1) Why would Kontakt be necessary or helpful to the SC user? Thought that the SC program needed just three components - Kompakt/WordBuilder/Actual Library.

2) If Kontakt is a general sampler, how does it compare to GigaStudio? Would GS do as well in relation to SC?

Thanks.

[Tomdini]

"2) If Kontakt is a general sampler, how does it compare to GigaStudio? Would GS do as well in relation to SC?"

No, sir. Kompakt instruments and multis are in the nki and nkm formats and use NI's proprietary monolithic file format to store the samples (so they're all protected in these giant blocks of data). So you couldn't use GS with the choirs, but Kontakt, of course, can read and decode all these things because it is based on the same engine (Kompakt only does the older K1 engine and has yet to be updated to the new K2 engine, but it works great for me).

To answer the first part of your question, I was repelled from GS because it's not a VST plugin, and everybody kept talking about how they needed 80 gajillion computers all networked together to run the app... which scared me the hell away. Went with Kontakt, really haven't regretted it. Use it on one computer, everything works fine.

-Tom

P.S. Your first question is simple: the main benefit for an SC user having Kontakt is access to the full men's and full women's chorus multis. Kompakt can't assign the 10 (I think) necessary slots required for either chorus because it can only accomodate eight instruments at any given time. Kontakt can accomodate many, many instruments and so unlocks usage of the full choruses (chori?).

[Senso]

Hey Tom, thanks for your reply. I get the basic idea here. Looks like Kompakt and Kontakt were built to work together, kinda like the “Lysine contingency” in Jurassic Park…all the great dinos eat the same customized food…in this case, they read the same file format.

FYI, I don't own Kontakt in its full glory, though the Kontakt Player comes with Finale (2006 version) - which I do own. But only as a hidden, much smaller utility to play back Finale files.

Know what you mean about Giga, as I run two connected systems and it works just fine with Garritan samples etc. In this day and age you’ll either have to run multi-software setups, or multi-hardware setups to take full advantage of what’s out there. The simpler the better…amen.