Ableton Forum

Hi all - I'm trying to find a great sampler for Live 5 and 6. A while back, I purchased SampleTank 2 XL to use within Live, which ended up having dissapointing compatibility issues, which I've gotten into in previous posts.

It looks as though it will be a long time until the issues are fixed, if at all, so I'm thinking of trying another route. I've heard good things about Kontakt 2 from Native Instruments, but are there known issues or a sampler that works even better as a plugin within Live? Thanks for the help!

depends on what u want from ur sampler

playing instrument banks?

mangling stuff?

live 6 has racks + simpler which can do fregging amazing things and if thats not enough you can buy ableton's own sampler called.... Sampler.

agree....stick with Ableton goodies until you are absolutely certain (people discuss/disclose on the board) a 3rd party sampler is a better fit

Sampler is definitely a solid choice for Live, and it is very CPU efficient. I also like Kontakt as it has some great effects, but a lot of what you'd do with Kontakt you can do in Sampler.

If you're looking for something different check out Symptohm: Melohman...

Greg

Also, for a low cost alternative, look at Imageline's DirectWave. But honestly, you can't go wrong with Sampler/Simpler.

what is considered low cost these days?
Sampler is i believe $200

what about the others?

Directwave is $99, or even $79 during a sale. You can post a wanted in the KVRAudio forums where they offer stuff for sale, and you might get it even cheaper.

Directwave also samples other VSTi. So if you have a CPU-killer Reaktor VSTi, you can pull it up withing Directwave and it'll resample it as a Directwave sampled instrument, saving you tons of CPU. A very nice features.

My choice is Kontakt

The best sound quality and a nice GUI and powerfull as hell.

regards

nebulae wrote:Directwave is $99, or even $79 during a sale. You can post a wanted in the KVRAudio forums where they offer stuff for sale, and you might get it even cheaper.

But after you have a whole library of sounds in DW, if you want to change samplers in the future, what would read DW files? At least with Kontakt there's a path forward..

As long as you don't use encrypted sample libraries for Kontakt...

Directwave EFFORTLESSLY imports Kontakt libraries. All of my libraries are in Kontakt format, purely for futureproof reasons.

Hey everybody - Thanks for all the replies. What I'm looking for is a totally stable sampler plugin to use within Live that has very realistic instruments with lots of character (both traditional and synth sounds) and that also has handy features and the ability to tweak/manipulate/add effects.

I would try Ableton's Sampler, but does it even come with any instruments? And if so, are they strictly synth sounds?

For example, I want to have access to a really realistic piano, acoustic drum, or string sound when I need one, in addition to other sounds, and the ability to import and tweak/manipulate but most importantly stability.

SampleTank 2 XL seemed the ideal choice for me, but the stability of it within Live is a nightmare. =( Kontakt looks like a good alternative and I hear has much better stability. Your thoughts? Thanks for the advice!


.:doni

i'm partial to Kontakt myself. I just prefer the convenience of being able to use it within Live or Logic, at choice.

But Sampler is a great choice if you're only using Live

kontakt has a pretty damn steep learning curve, however...

I messed with it for about 2 hours and just didnt get it......

good sampler but maybe a bit hard to learn......

Ahh, hm yeah, I've heard that, but why so hard? Can't you just load the instrument you want and play?

So what's so hard about it, the routing or something? Although it's a pain, I'm already used to routing SampleTank, using it multitimbrally, since using multiple instances of it is out of the question (I've tried, baaad idea, LOL).