Review of Kontakt 2

 

In fact, regardless of your sequencer platform, Kontakt2 vies to be a way to tie together all your soft sampler instruments into one interface.  The more high dollar libraries you have, like the Quantum Leap Orchestra libraries, StormDrum,  Colossus,  Quantum Leap's Rare Instruments, etc., the more you will want, no, need to have Kontakt2.  You can mix and match instruments from all these libraries in a single multi, rather that calling up separate (and more limited) GUIs for each instrument.  Logic users who have trouble with Native Instruments stuff will be happy to note that Kontakt 2 passes AUVAL in Logic 7.3 and with OS 10.4, and will load some important NI powered libraries that don't pass AUVAL.
 

Speaking of Libraries, Kontakt 2 comes with a really good one.  15GB if you like to count.  But it isn't just quantity.  You get an excellent selection of the Vienna Symphonic Library, (known as VSL), and they sound beautiful.  Lots of other stuff, something to please everyone
 

You can get an idea from the pic above of where I am on my World Cafe Bank, which is now at about 700 instruments and 1200 samples.  I just ported the whole thing from my e5000 to emulator X, and then from that to Kontakt 2 I took me one day of making sounds in Kontakt 2 to realize its superiority over Emulator X, which is also a very good soft sampler. What makes me say this?
 

In Kontakt 2 I can work really fast and everything is right where I need it. It also allows one to solo individual voices while you work on them--something emulator X cannot do--a minor point for some, but for me, critical. Another cool thing--getting new samples into Kontakt 2 is as easy an dragging them from the finder on my Mac. That feature, coupled with Spotlight in OS X (10.4) makes finding those lost samples on cavernous hard drives--including network drives-easy and fast.
 

Like Emulator X you can go really deep with Kontakt 2, with extraordinary layering, zoning and grouping. There is also a new feature that lets you create banks of up to 128 presets and you can call these up with program change commands from the sequencer.  These banks give you yet another way to organize your libraries.  You can put all your French horns, for example, from every library, in one bank where you can quickly audition them, then hit the "purge" function to remove the unused ones from memory.


Another huge feature in Kontakt 2 is you can create loops within your samples really well. The program gives you audio feedback as you move loop points, just like the hardware samplers do. So you can hear those clicks and pops which are the roadmap to finding the perfect loop points. Plus crossfade looping is fast. By the time you get done punching in the value, its done! Its just as good as the Emagic EXS here but the parameter is easier to access. There's also little niceties like a loop tuner and a master reference tone is just a click away, making the hardest job of sampling--tuning--much easier.
 

In Use:  I use Kontakt 2 in Logic Pro and in Cubase SX.  Both work fine with Kontakt2.  Have not tried Sonar yet.  One thing about SX, when you launch Kontakt 2, it creates all the midi and audio channel strips automatically.  In Logic it works like all other software instruments.  If you want multiple outs, you have to create them in the environment.  Its not automatic.  

Works with Kore:  Kontakt 2 can save presets into Kore's database if you want to see them show up in lists with the presets from your other software instruments.  Kore comes with the Kontakt 2 library already setup in Kore.