NI Kontakt 4 set up VS an East West Play set up

[markhansavon]

Hello there.

I was just wondering if there are any people here that either have an NI Kontakt 4 set up (like Komplete, etc... using the Kontakt 4 sample player as the center of your midi programming studio) or an East West Play set up (the EWQL sample libraries).

If you had to take one of the setups exclusively, what would you pick and why? What are your thoughts on the samplers and their libraries?

[dannthr]

Hello there.

I was just wondering if there are any people here that either have an NI Kontakt 4 set up (like Komplete, etc... using the Kontakt 4 sample player as the center of your midi programming studio) or an East West Play set up (the EWQL sample libraries).

If you had to take one of the setups exclusively, what would you pick and why? What are your thoughts on the samplers and their libraries?

Hey man, I have both and if I had to pick one, I'd pick the original one: Kontakt.

I picked Kontakt for my first farm machine back in 2006 over Gigasamples and I'm gald I did.

Back then, all the EWQL libraries were on Kontakt, so was VSL. Now, there are more Kontakt libraries available, with a greater diversity of options, than EWQL has in their whole PLAY library.

Both EW and VSL moved on to their own proprietary sampler formats, and when they moved out of Kontakt, the Kontakt selection blossomed to include AAA level strings from Audiobro, epic over the top percussion, woodwinds, and vocal libraries from Tonehammer, Cinesamples, and Westgate Studios.

Kontakt is still my number one choice.

However, I have had success in running both Kontakt standalone and PLAY standalone on a single machine.

I've also heard reliable rumors that the latest version of PLAY in beta testing now will be able to be used in VSL's Vienna Ensemble Pro mixing software, which is fantastic news as VEPro can also use Kontakt AND VSL's VSTis together.

Meaning, with Vienna Ensemble Pro, you can have it all, all at once, in a single mix, playing nicely together.

But if I had to pick one: Kontakt. (Sorry EW, I love EW tons, but Kontakt just still offers more in the long run)

[Scrap McNapps]

Kontakt I thought would be more expandable library wise.

Also doesn't play require a dongle for it to work?

[dannthr]

Kontakt I thought would be more expandable library wise.

Also doesn't play require a dongle for it to work?

Yes it does, an iLok, which you might already have.

[markhansavon]

I've used Play and the iLok before and really had a bad experience with it.

So Kontakt doesn't use iLok?

[Kanthos]

Nope, all NI products use a serial number and authorization system - you install their Service Center and each time you install a new NI product, you have to add your serial number and authorize it on their server.

[Scrap McNapps]

Yessir. It also frees up a USB slot for more useful things.