Question about soundcards and Kontakt Player

[Whipsmack]

I'm thinking of purchasing the Garritan Personal Orchestra but it said that i'd need a sound card that is compatible with Kontakt. Does anyone have any good recommendations?

The sound card i'm using right now is a Creative Audigy card.

Thanks!

[zircon]

I'm pretty sure the VST would run properly even if you didn't HAVE a soundcard. You just wouldn't be able to hear it. Your card should be fine.

[Whipsmack]

Heya Zircon! thanks for reply, wow you're a judge here now nice, nice

[OverCoat]

Hey, I remember you! haha

sup Whipsmack?

Anyway, yeah, I don't know what a "kontakt-compatible soundcard" is, since I'm pretty sure any soundcard is compatible. Your Audigy is fine right now [in this context anyway ].

[Whipsmack]

Ya I got it to work.... lets just say I have some free soundfonts from hammersound that sound better than this Garritan big band one.

Although the guitar and piano are really nice, the horns just sound very, very midi'ish and i'll continue to use the french horns from fluid heh...

It only lets me play one note at a time too which really sucks.

Lately i've been messing around with ambience and tracks for a movie my friends are making hah. Hows it going with you? Is soundtempest ever going to come back ?

[zircon]

JABB is a pretty nice sample package, but unlike soundfonts, you really have to work with it a lot to get it to sound good. Same goes for GPO. I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly. As for one note at a time? That sounds like a configuration problem, unless the patch itself is monophonic (possible for solo instruments).

ST ain't coming back anytime soon though.

[DZComposer]

JABB has a learning curve. (I still haven't gotten it to sound good yet, but I know it can and have followed it's development since it was announced). You MUST use several of the special MIDICC controls to get it to sound right. The reason is realism. A lot of different sounds exsist in Jazz and Gary Garritan wanted Tom Hopkins (the programmer) to program it so that you don't have to load 50 bajillion instruments to get the all the sounds you want.

The one-note at a time thing is another realism thing. JABB is designed as an ensemble of individual players, rather than a collection of ensemble sounds.

Thoug I agree that ensemble patches would be nice for JABB.

Here's a quote from Tom Hopkins concerning JABB trumpets:

"there was no attempt to offer a "Miles Davis trumpet," or a "John Coltrane tenor" or a "Cannonball Adderley alto" or any other specific, individual sound. That's a bottomless pit that we considered impractical in the extreme - and unnecessary for our purposes. For solo trumpet, I suggest that you avoid the brightest of the instruments and also make sure that any instrument you choose is not used at too high average mod wheel settings. High average mod wheel settings will give very bright results. Modest settings will give less-bright results. The horns are all recorded dry so the tone quality of the instrument in a mix will depend as much on the choice of placement in an acoustic environment as it does on the instrument itself (perhaps more.) The "Margot's Mood" Chuck Israels big band demo used a solo trumpet/tenor sax out front and I had no trouble getting a reasonable sound in that context using the Tpt 5 instrument. As with all attempts to use these instruments in an exposed solo context, it will require a great deal of time-consuming, detailed controller manipulation to get good results. In due time, I will create a number of solo instrument tutorials to spell out the best ways of applying the necessary controllers if one wishes to invest the time. But I will always include the strong recommendation that the user hire a real player if solo work is required."

JABB requires a lot of learning.

While GPO is similar, it isn't as hard to get right.

Oh, and trust me, GPO's F Horns kick the grap out of the Fluid ones when used correctly. Take it from an F Horn player who has used both sets.

I would advise moving up from the Audigy at some point. While the Audigy does have the ASIO driver set, there are better cards out there. I've moved from an Audigy to an Audiotrak Maya 7.1, to a M-Audio Delta 1010LT. I've found better sound quality and usability with each step.

[Whipsmack]

So DZ, when you compose a piece where you want 3 trumpet players playing different notes at the same time... Do you have to create 3 different instances of JABB and record each one seperately?

That would be extremely annoying to do. I want to be able to record all 3 at the same time so I can play chords...

It might not sound perfect but it's how i've been recording stuff forever.

The Fluid trumpets allow me to do that, and it's so much easier to write music that way.

Is the GPO the same way with strings, one note at a time? Or is it more like Cadenza strings where I can play up to 4 at a time in one instance?

I hope that makes sense, I don't know much about music terms or any of the technology used.

[Compyfox]

Kontakt Player has 8 channels. Each channel can use one instrument. If you write your strings for example, simply record it with one patch, then split your recording up and use different channels for different instruments (Violin, Viola, Celli, Contrabass), or leave it as is. Same with Trumpets.

Or do it a bit different (which sounds more humongus): Insertin the Kontakt Player (the first three slots) different trupet patches, then set the player to OMNI mode, but route the channels not "individually" but to the correspondig channel you write the trumpets in (for example: Channel 3). After that, you can split up your files again, or not. However due to the layered sound it might sound a bit... akward.

[DZComposer]

You can load up to 8 instuments in a single instance of JABB or GPO, but for your trumpets you'd want to put them on individual MIDI channels. I believe the KP does it for you. (I've been working in full Kontakt 2 lately)

I would advise against using the "Omni" MIDI port for JABB/GPO. Especially if you want to write multiple parts as loading all 3 trumpets and putting them on OMNI restricts all 3 trumpets to playing the same 1 note. I personally assign things to channels for more control.

GPO and JABB are different.

GPO is designed more from an ensemble standpoint. In GPO, the "Solo" wind instruments are like the JABB ones with the one note at a time thing. Load a "PLR #", "Overlay", or "Ensemble" patch to get multiphony.

The Solo Strings do not have a 1 note limit, but rather a 4 note limit.

I would advise you read the JABB and GPO manuals. They describe this kind of stuff better than I can.

My best advice is to play with GPO a lot first before trying to dive into the JABB deep end. One of the functions of GPO's design is that it is a great introductory library.

JABB, however, is not. It is a more advanced library with a steeper learning curve. Knowledge of how GPO's more advanced features work will help trmendously when working with JABB.

The Strad is an advanced library and I suggest you wait until your comfortable with Kontakt Players (and for the Kontakt 2 Player to come out because as of now, you need the full Kontakt 2 to use it).

Might I also suggest downloading Garritan Studio so that you han have up to 8 instances of GPO with/or JABB at a time. You can get it here. http://www.garritan.com/downloads.html Make sure your JABB and GPO are up-to-date while your there.

Remember, you're moving into the world of more advanced sampling. Very few things out there are as simple as the SoundFont way, and there's a reason for that: you can get more realism by including more control features and/or articulations.

[Whipsmack]

Thanks very much for all the great info guys!

[Yoozer]

but it said that i'd need a sound card that is compatible with Kontakt. Does anyone have any good recommendations?

What they mean with "compatible" is "ideally should support ASIO" as there is otherwise a delay between pressing a key and hearing a sound. This delay is called latency, and ideally it is below 10 milliseconds, otherwise you don't really feel you're playing things and hearing 'm instantly, which screws with your sense of rhythm. The latency is not caused by your MIDI controller but by your soundcard's drivers. It does not matter if you have the melody already played; rendering happens offline anyway.

You could try www.asio4all.com or the Kx Project drivers ( http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1 ) for better performance with your Audigy. Or, you could choose to get another soundcard; E-mu offers some really nice ones for not too much.