OT: Kontakt 3: Worth sticking with it?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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nepotist
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OT: Kontakt 3: Worth sticking with it?

Post by nepotist » Tue Mar 25, 2008 4:13 am

I bought Kontakt 3 today to add to my arsenal and while i am admittedly a noob on many fronts i can figure out intuitive software extremely quickly...ie when I purchased Live for the first time I had a song done within a few hours. So after spending about 7 hours with Kontakt 3 today i'm sort of feeling like a. i have a headache and b. maybe i wasted my money because so far i can't figure out shit on this thing. The instruments that come with it seem pretty cool but as for the sampler i'm having a lot of trouble understanding how the thing works. So far i'm thinking give me Sampler any day over this. Perhaps I should have done a bit more research but I have Reaktor and its pretty complicated with what it can do but i can still make it do cool things without spending a night with my head in a manual. so my question: if anyone out there is using Kontakt 3 and loving it, let me know should i stick with it? i just like to make cool sounding stuff with samples, its not that difficult, so maybe i should stick with Sampler? I guess i'm frustrated because i spent the night reading a book and not making any tracks!
also for some reason i can't play any rex files at all either, so if anyone knows the answer to that fill me in...nothing in the manual except to say that rx is supported.
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ashtonron
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Post by ashtonron » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:54 am

sick with it, you'll get used to it.

It took me a while to get used to all the different terminology. i.e. samples, groups, instruments, multis etc..

A good place to start is taking a wav and creating a new instrument, drop the wav into the empty multi. This will create an instrument with one group that is mapped across all the keyboard range.

You can then start to add effects, adjust the looping behaviour etc..

I would recommend reading the manual and always having it near by for reference, as it usually has the answer. There is a steep learning curve.

good luck.

polyslax
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Post by polyslax » Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:14 am

I totally feel you on this. I had K2 for about a year and eventually sold it. Powerful? Yeah, absolutely. Inspiring? Nope, not to me. The fun and immediacy that I wanted just wasn't there.

I sometimes wish I had K3 to run some of the sample libraries I've seen, and haven't ruled out picking it up for that, but for quickly effing with samples or field recordings, I don't dig it.
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gnapier
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Post by gnapier » Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:17 am

This will definitely help:

http://www.native-instruments.com/index ... orial8&L=1

Also, the DVD tutorial they sell for Kontakt2 is about 90% still usable and is an effin' great resource. Highly recommended.

Good luck!

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Winston
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Post by Winston » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:36 pm

I say stick with it too.

Yes, it seems complicated, but once you have the different parts/functions worked out, you realize that you only need some of it for quick fun instrument making. My favorite is just to load one sample and use it as an instrument. It's far better than sampler for this because of the tone/time machine. Ie. you can assign a sample to a keyrange so that it changes pitch, but the duration won't change, so you won't get that obvious sampler speed-up or down sound. And the effects are great and it's easy to assign cc's to any parameters. Definitely check out the vid, it helps. And if you ever do get into bigger patch making, it is so much easier than sampler. The way the keyzones are visually laid out makes far easier to see what you're playing. I can never find the sample I'm after in sampler.

Precision
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Post by Precision » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:46 pm

Another vote for 'stick with it'.

It IS a very complicated instrument, and it can be quite overwhelming....But - like others here have suggested - have a look at the tutorials: they're informative (the K2 DVD is definitely a winner) and it's much easier to follow along with them rather than the manual.

Maybe don't worry about trying to master the whole thing in one go; how about just loading up an instrument, playing with the macros, and fiddle with some modulation settings?

Don't think I've ever done more than that and I've had K3 since it came out :oops:
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jeskola
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Post by jeskola » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:51 pm

Its actually quite a simple pacakage once you get into it...

Some of the efx sound brilliant and the modulation is a breeze...
Read through the manual - its not that big... do it all step by step and youll have the hang of it in a few hours. The only thinkg i found complicated was the routing of individual elemnts to individual channels in live... is not easy to work out.

nepotist
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Post by nepotist » Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:23 pm

thanks for all the encouragement, I actually had another go this morning after a night's sleep and felt a bit better about it, i was actually able to get it to do something. I will stick with it for sure. I think i've been spoiled by Ableton's ease of use! Still can't play RX2 files though, anyone else had this problem? It drags and loads fine but when you open the editor there is no sample in there...
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Liam
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Post by Liam » Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:33 pm

Yes, definitely a stick with Kontakt vote.

Do see those tutorials on the NI website (as shown in a previous message).

And that DVD tutorial for Kontakt 2 is still very useful. Seen a few of those for sale for about $20 on KVR I think. Well worth that much.

Try this too: Though it is for an older version of Kontakt:

http://www.matsc.net/Kurs/Kontakt%202%2 ... uction.htm

ashtonron
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Post by ashtonron » Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:32 am

nepotist wrote:thanks for all the encouragement, I actually had another go this morning after a night's sleep and felt a bit better about it, i was actually able to get it to do something. I will stick with it for sure. I think i've been spoiled by Ableton's ease of use! Still can't play RX2 files though, anyone else had this problem? It drags and loads fine but when you open the editor there is no sample in there...
you have to select the sample first. click on it in the mapping view.

4.33
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Post by 4.33 » Wed Apr 16, 2008 10:20 am

I'd say sell it and buy Live's Sampler or upgrade to Live 7 (i heard it's included there)

the immediacy of dropping a waveform into the thing with a simple mouse drag is hard to beat..

and all the sampler features are there anyway i guess.. i never tried the kontakt tho

i never bothered creating a huge multisample instrument, and it looks like it's really a pain up your arse. however for quick sound design everything's quite straightforward and VERY tweakable
Last edited by 4.33 on Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Timur
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Post by Timur » Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:02 am

Simpler/Sampler are great tools, but did you ever try to load - let's say - 32 different samples into one instance of Sampler and work with that? Now you might say, no problem, I can use 32 instances of Sampler, but that will quickly increase your memory imprint above what a single instance of Kontakt uses and forces you to to awkward mark/click/switch operations whenever you want to change a common parameter on more than one instance at once (Drum Racks help to make that easier though).

4.33
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Post by 4.33 » Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:07 am

Timur wrote:Simpler/Sampler are great tools, but did you ever try to load - let's say - 32 different samples into one instance of Sampler and work with that? Now you might say, no problem, I can use 32 instances of Sampler, but that will quickly increase your memory imprint above what a single instance of Kontakt uses and forces you to to awkward mark/click/switch operations whenever you want to change a common parameter on more than one instance at once (Drum Racks help to make that easier though).
well, why'd you need 32 instances? that's what zones&layers are for, eh?

nepotist
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Post by nepotist » Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:59 pm

I've actually been using it quite a bit, the sound library that comes with it is awesome, and its pretty easy to combine sounds to make cool instruments. I can play rex files now also, I had to re install the rex bundle from propellerheads, that was the issue there. I still don't understand why you can't play the sample by hitting the spacebar though, to me that's the most instinctual thing about all these programs. I still have a lot to learn about it though.
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Daim
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Post by Daim » Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:04 pm

I sold kontakt because it never saved the midi mappings with my live projects.. always when i opened an existing project ii had to switch to omni and back in order to hear sth.. for each instrument.. crap

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