Read the full review:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/review_of_kontakt_2.htm
Just got it. I am very impressed and have dug down deep to really learn this piece in all its depth. Kontakt 2 blows away Kontakt 1.5 tremendously.
Just look at it now.
Logic users who have trouble with Native Instruments stuff will be happy to note that Kontakt 2 passes AUVAL in Logic 7.1 and with OS 10.4, and will load some important NI powered libraries that don't pass AUVAL, like The Garritan Personal orchestra, East West RA, to name 2.
You can get an idea of where I am on my World Cafe Bank. 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 many NI products, Kontakt 2 has a goodly share of bugs, particularly on its new bold features like the Script Editor (which includes some very cool things like arpeggiators, a drum pattern sequencer, chord generator, glissando maker, and more) for the serious tweakers among us. But Emulator X has its bugs too.
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.
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.
Of course every sampler has drawbacks. Perhaps the most aggravating (though not a deal killer) is that the import filters for emu format miss a lot of parameters. But as usual the maps come out fine, filters, velocity, and some envelopes come out strange. Loop points carry over but with the loop turned off in many cases. Importing from EXS is much better. So if you are a big user of emu cd roms, port over to EXS first with translator, then drive it home to .NKI in Kontakt. Might save a few thousand tweaks or so.
http://www.zzounds.com/a--3745/item--NINKONTAKTMAC
