is there a working sampler?

[AmericanCheese]

i give up on Kontakt, is there a sampler out there what works with Protools? any suggestions would be great.

thanks

AC

[3over3]

I've got MOTU MachFive. It's great for what I want it to do (convert and play my own collected Emu E4/Akai S3000 sample library and make new sounds). There's some discussion over how it compares to Kontakt and ROMplers (playback-only plug-ins like Atmosphere and SampleTank etc) - the bundled library is good, but not exhaustively brilliant (apparently) and it's only fairly good at importing Giga format libraries - but it works for me. It's not too processor heavy, it's pretty stable and the import function works well if it is actually capable of reading your libraries.

There's a strange difference that you wouldn't find out about until you'd bought it if you're on XP - supposedly the Mac RTAS version provides multiple outputs to PT whereas the Windows RTAS version doesn't. I'm on XP, imagine my delight...

Version 2 has been due for release since Jan 2005 but hasn't materialised yet - the rumour was that it will be a free upgrade, although nobody knows if MOTU'll stick to it or indeed ever release v2. Until then v1.2's fine for me.

[AmericanCheese]

thanks for the info!
i am on a mac, so i wonder how the stability is?

i must mention that the major problems with Kontakt started after upgrading to pt7. for example:

Kontakt won't load any of my banks that i have created, i have no idea why.(their tech-support is useless) also if i get kontakt to work, once i close that protools session that is it. if i try and reopen that session it just crashes protools, rendering that session useless.
i am running version 1.5.x i can't justify spending more money on a product that does not fully work or at least on some basic level. it has always been really buggy and "crashy". also it never remembers where the samples are. you have to manually do it, that gets a bit long in the tooth when you have a bunch of large orchestra instruments.

i have been looking into Gigasampler, MIDI over LAN and Audio LAN. any feedback on those would be great.

thanks again

[Earthling]

I dunno... I've been using Kontakt2 with-in PT LE 7.1, with great results ( even though the most recent version of K2 still does not qualify as being optimized for PT 7 ).



Mac G5 DC2.0 w/3GB Ram -- (OSX 10.4.5)
Digi002R

[3over3]

thanks for the info!
i am on a mac, so i wonder how the stability is?



Before I bought MachFive I asked for feedback on both the Mac and Windows LE forums (not sure if this VI forum was up and running then) and received positive feedback from the Mac side, so I went ahead and bought never expecting there to be a significant difference in spec between the platforms.

You could try unicornation.com which has a mac-based M5 forum too. I don't think there are too many issues with the latest version (1.2.3 I think).

[bassntreble]

there's always NN-19, NNXT and redrum that come with reason in the ignition pack. they're basic but very usable for my needs. they're rock solid, low on processor overhead, NNXT is pretty close to AKAI s-series functionality and with rewire you have a potential 64 outputs with 4 NNXT's.

[Mark Wheaton]

If you want to play existing libraries of sounds, most good libraries come with their own player and increasingly it is a Native Instruments player. this works fine for me. I find the dedicated Samplers like Kontakt 2 to be too complicated for basic play back of samples but they are probably great if you are sampling your own sounds. Also NI is very stuck in this challenge response method of copy protection that is locked to your Machine, Hard Drive and OS. so if you upgrade your software You have to reauthorize, and they can get you with their overly complicated method. If you deactivate your authorization, you can not reauthorize on the same machine without calling their tech support and jumping through hoops.

Mach Five can crash if any of the samples you have imported get corrupted which is very common for Giga libraries and even Akai and EMU libraries. And Mach Five as yet does not have any native format Libraries out there.

[Blunt Arrow]

I can't get Kontakt 2 to work as an rtas plugin without this static sound. I've tried all differnt buffer sizes to no avail. It's like the computer can't keep up. I'm trying it in a session with only one MIDI track and one Steinway D loaded. No other tracks or plugins are used; only Kontakt 2 on an Aux track. Anyone have any suggestions. I have a dual 1.8 GHZ G5 with a 002R and am using PT 7.1 Thanks, Luke

[bassntreble]

if you're working at 48K, try using Kontakt in a 44.1K session. Also switch from 2 processors to 1 in the playback engine. I have the same problems with Reaktor5. There's supposed to be a fix in the works but I've been waiting 2 months for it and Reaktor 5 has been unusable in PT 7.

[jeremyroberts]

Cheese, you are giving up on an outdated version of Kontakt.

K2, latest version (2.0.2-something), works just fine w/ PT71cs5 and 10.4.5

The answer to your question, is, YES. I use it every day.

(but this is not what you wanted to hear?)

[DaveSB]

Nope - there is there a not at this point in time a working sampler as a plugin for Pro Tools none of them work 100% with with Pro Tools.
Best of a bad bunch is Machfive--at least its HTDM.

The only decent way to go is to buy a another machine and either use GigaStudio 3 or Logics EXS24 and get a RME Hamerful 9652 and lightpipe back to Pro Tools

[3over3]

Nope - there is there a not at this point in time a working sampler as a plugin for Pro Tools none of them work 100% with with Pro Tools.
Best of a bad bunch is Machfive--at least its HTDM.

The only decent way to go is to buy a another machine and either use GigaStudio 3 or Logics EXS24 and get a RME Hamerful 9652 and lightpipe back to Pro Tools



[exasperated sarcasm] What? Yeah, I give up, you got me. That's absolutely the only decent way. Why didn't I see it before? Do you work for RME? Apple? Tascam? [/exasperated sarcasm]

Have you had trouble with plug-in samplers then? How did you reach your conclusion?

I'm not sure the original question was a simple as "how do I play samples"... what's your definition of a working sampler? Or one working 100%? MachFive RTAS works really well. It does what I need it to do. It doesn't get in the way of the process. If you're saying there isn't a sampler that does everything you could possibly think of, you may be right, but that's never going to materialise as we customers perpetually wish for more from our kit. The question is what's useable now for the job required?

I use Logic on a daily basis and MachFive's functionality is superior to the EXS. It does go about things in a slightly different way to EXS though and there is the odd trick (if you're a VSL user, say) that MachFive can't do. Overall, MachFive's got more tools, and is more intuitive at the sample/keygroup edit level.

While your solution should work, it's just not good practical advice to claim that the "only decent" way to get sampler functionality in PT is to lightpipe a separate system back in. You'd be missing a couple of things I really like - set-ups saved with the host file and wire-free patching.

Why not advise the use of a hardware sampler? They're cheap (generally, compared to what they used to be) and some of them sound really good and/or distinctive. On a cost level, your solution would mean spending thousands more for the extra machine and interface(s) before you even get to the software choice.

[dubaifox]

Why not advise the use of a hardware sampler? They're cheap



They are cheap for a reason. You can't load much into them any more, the editing/programming features are done on a 2x4 inch screen and you spend the better part of your morning loading up sounds, wading through screen after screen, swapping out CD Roms, forgetting exactly which patch you loaded up in that last session. What a pain!!

I have a seperate PC running Kontakt 2 with a RME 9652 lightpiped into Pro Tools. It is a dream, especially compared to my old Emu Hardware Synth. It now is a doorstop.

The PC session may not save with your Mac Pro Tools Session, but with one mouse click you can open a saved multi in Kontakt2. Pretty painless.

What he meant by "decent", is that if you are trying to use any other VI's or plugins, in addition to triggering multiple samples you are just flat out going to run out of computer resources. You need a second dedicated sampler to make it really work with any success.

[3over3]

Back to the question, I still think it's a bit much to say that there isn't a working sampler. The nature of host-based systems is that we use them until they fall over. Yes, you can have sampler functionality with a plug-in. Yes, the more you can export off-processor the better, but that's true of any plug-in that shares the system's CPU resources.

[booyakka]

Please excuse my innocence Mr fox, but how do you link the midi between the two machines - does the lightpipe do this all thru Tools somehow too?

Would love to know how to run the sampler externally - this will save me a bomb in RTAS power...

many thanks