Native Instruments Kontakt VST PC

I've played piano for 35 years, into synthesis the last 5 years, currently have a Yamaha P120 digital piano and a Alesis QS7. I've upgraded to ver 1.2 of Kontakt so that I can utilize the direct from disk option, which works fine with a firewire 7200 rpm drive with oxford chip. I'm using this sampler for just about all the native sounds I record in Cubase SX; I'm using Reason 2.5 for rhythm backing and Kontakt for solo, pad, guitar, bass, strings. I have Groove Agent for vst drums, though it hasn't really played much of a role in what I'm doing so far. I have NI B4 for organ and I'll probably get Lounge Lizard for EPs. My computer is an IBM P4 2.4 mhz, Windows XP Pro, with a gig of ram, Delta 66 card, Matrox dual monitor card, Mackie VLZPro 12 channel, and I'm about to add a TC Electronics M300 effects box for effects and digital in for miking and for the piano. Right now I'm just monitoring with some Roland MA8's and Paradigm Atoms through a good stereo system.

No problems with installation, automation supported, and I haven't needed to consult the manual, so far. OK, here's when I fell in love: I loaded Proteus 1 soundfonts, one at a time, not layering, and just played around seeing what I could do with these rather thin and short samples. I soon saw that I had a sound shaping tool that was not only powerful--there are several of those around--but really useful. I was able to turn these elderly bleeps into really lovely and expressive sounds, fit to use in a modern production, and it wasn't all that hard. Of course if you layer on the tweakage, you'd better bounce the track, because the cpu usage mounts up. Still, I had that lovely cessation of gear lust that comes when you've found a piece of equipment that really works.
Loading programs is easy, in a few seconds you can load up a whole rack's worth; the browser is simple to use, and the editing, once you understand the structure, is intuitive. And there are tons of presets available for each editing module. It loads my 1.5 gig Steinway Upright sample in about 20 seconds and plays it with no dropouts or artifacts no matter what I'm playing.

Samples sound great in it, and it can make really bland samples shine. Several samples at once can be easily layered and edited as a group. The effects are great; I've decided not to buy an upscale dedicated set of plugin effects but rather to use this for most sounds, and to use an outboard box for add'l effects and mastering.
I had some EXS25 sample libraries left over from when Logic went to Apple and I went to PC, and I was able to really stretch out with them and have more fun than I ever had with the native sampler. I lost the controller info, but that can be reprogrammed easily.

Kontakt is a killer instrument, limited only by CPU power; link a few cheap computers and you can rule. This is not to say that the program is a cpu hog; it's not; but it has so many options for realtime sound tweaking that the meter can go red. The program has never crashed, and it gets along fine with its VST colleagues. As far as I'm concerned, sound modules are history; if I need more tracks, I'll buy a laptop and use VST system link. I can buy a P4 refurb from IBM global financing on ebay for $500 and put an Audiophile soundcard in it and still be under what a good sound module retails for. When you start adding up the cost of hardware samplers it can replace, the value is far higher.

I've been making music since 1990 on the Amiga Soundtracker.
I use Kontakt 1.2 with FL Studio.
I make soundtrack music.

Finding a sample with the browser is not what we're used to for windows users.

The sampler supports all the sampler formats available i.e Giga, EXS, soundfont, Akai... 24-bit samples are supported also. It sound very good. I compared the fruity soundfont player with it, and the KONTAKT renders the sound with more details.

Expensive, but worth the price.

I record in my home studio with Cubase SX.

Kontakt is a little over-complicated for basic sampling duties, but that's the price of using software with a lot of features. The interface is a bit odd in terms of screen layout, loading patches, etc. It would be easier to get around if it stuck to Windows (or even Mac) standards instead of trying to impart of bauhaus stylishness to its interface.

Kontakt itself doesn't "sound" like anything, since it is a sample player. However it does have extensive sound-mangling capabilities, and when using these to modify the sounds you load into it it sounds quite good. I'm less impressed with the effects and in general use outboard VST effects rather than the built-in Kontakt effects.

The sample library that is included with Kontakt is very weak. There are a few good instruments but most things aren't as good, even, as the sample library that comes with Reason. The piano samples are particularly pitiful. Tsk, tsk...

I rarely use Kontakt in my tunes because I don't have good samples to insert into it. When I build up a compatible sample library I will probably make regular use of it. I doubt if I will ever do much with its sound-mangling capabilities, because I tend to reach for other tools for those kinds of sounds. As a basic sampler and sample player Kontakt is adequate. There wasn't much competition in the niche of VST samplers when I made the purchase, so I can't feel too bad about it. Despite my criticisms if I had to choose between it and Gigastudio I still prefer Kontakt as an operating environment...

Sadly the latest trend in samples seems to be self-contained products (like Yellow Tools' Culture and Spectrasonics' Trilogy) so I'm not sure if I'll ever get the good stuff to put in Kontakt.