Library Format – and the not so free Kontakt player

[Ketan Kamalia]

Firstly, to all those who have diligently and lovingly mades these AMAZING sample libraries, I and along with many others are very very grateful for all your efforts… Thank you.

The reason that I’m posting this is, I, along with I’m sure a good few others, have Kontakt player 6 – which is free… but for 15 mins, (which is not exactly free imho).

• I run Ableton (And previously ran Logic Pro X)
• I’m on a Mac
• I can see that I can imports ESX into Ableton (and logic of course)

QUESTIONS:
• Is there any particular reason that so many libraries are on ONLY in Kontakt Format?
• Is there any simpler way to import NKI’s into Ableton? (apparently this used to convert and work.. but not anymore?)
• Any free converters or other work arounds that people can suggest, are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance 🙂

[Vinnyrogers]

I was just thinking, before I saw your post, that it would be great if Pianobook instruments could use the Spitfire player. Which can probably be used in any DAW with no limitations.

Failing that, is there a way to just view piano book instruments by player type, EXS/Kontakt?

[Vinnyrogers]

oops, I just realised there is a way to search by player type 🙂

[LCTR]

Think it’s a huge shame that so many of these free samples realistically need an almost-£360 plugin to use.

Means that the breath of people that might be reached is severely limited, especially for amateurs.

As far as I know, and I’d love to be proven wrong, but isn’t the Kontact library system a closed proprietary format? I’ve not seen tools readily available to convert Kontakt libraries into other opensource or fully free formats.

[Ian Leic]

I’m very new to this site and have been looking for the option to search by player type that you mentioned as you mentioned. I can’t find it anywhere!
Any help of how to do this would be greatly appreciated by this old codger.

[bo din]

@Ian Leic

Go to Library then say Pianos.

Under the main heading of PIANOS you’ll see a load of tags. The last four are for;

Kontakt
EXS24
SFZ
Sequential Circuits.

[Ian Leic]

Thank you very much for such a prompt reply. It’s much appreciated and I can’t wait to start exploring the sounds on offer.

[Sid]

There is a small group of us working to translate Kontakt only instruments to the free SFZ format. Join us! I look at the Kontakt instruments (click the wrench) 15 minutes at a time in Kontakt player and translate them into SFZ. Unfortunately I don’t have as much spare time as I would like.

Then upload the SFZ as: Original Instrument Name (SFZ version)

I just did Gentle Vibes by Jon Meyer. It should be on the site soon.

[Terje Sandberg]

Sfz is free. Decent Samples is free. However in my 20 years in the business I think that buying Kontakt is one of the best investments I have made. There is a huge number of free libraries for full Kontakt, and another bunch for a very low cost. Both Sfz and Decent are very limited compared to Kontakt. If suddenly you find yourself converting Wav files to an instrument where I find Kontakt to be the best. And it is fairly easy. That said I think Native Instruments are exploiting customers with their upgrade policy, they are however by far not the only ones.

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