Cool new plug in format on the way -- CLAP

[EvilDragon]

But I'm not offering advice on Linux?

[BethHarmon]

Originally Posted by EvilDragon

But I'm not offering advice on Linux?

Never mind.

[Xasman]

Originally Posted by EvilDragon

Correct. SC is a complete antithesis to Kontakt. There's even no disk streaming and no timestretching!



DFD is not a planned feature for SC, for the time being. The main goal of initial SCXT release is to attempt and provide feature parity with SC1 and SC2 (and try to reconcile any differences they have), and maybe extend certain aspects a bit (4 instead of 2 effect slots per zone, more matrix slots, etc.).

OK - thanks for the info. I'm still not going to buy Kontakt, though. The challenge/response copy prevention alone rules it out for me in any case (as a matter of principle).

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by Xasman

OK - thanks for the info. I'm still not going to buy Kontakt, though. The challenge/response copy prevention alone rules it out for me in any case (as a matter of principle).

I bought a license for Kontakt back when I ran Win7 so when I switched to Linux, I deactivated the Win7 license and reactivated in WINE. Seems I only needed to run Native Access and it was all happy.

That said, I won't be buying any additional libraries for it, or installing any new Windows plugins at all in the future, because I'm only supporting native Linux vendors with cash from my wallet.

If there were a native Linux alternative, I would buy it and retire Kontakt. I used to run GigaStudio96 and have a fairly good assortment of .gig files that do work in LinuxSampler.

[audiojunkie]

Originally Posted by Xasman

OK - thanks for the info. I'm still not going to buy Kontakt, though. The challenge/response copy prevention alone rules it out for me in any case (as a matter of principle).

Your best bet, as I mentioned above, is LinuxSampler (along with gigedit, QSampler, etc) It supports Gig, SFZ, and SF2. It supports more SFZ opcodes than most other plugins (comparable with Sfizz). I personally have about 60Gb of giant high quality multisamples. It's really great! It's a full-blown, feature complete tool. :-)

The "ONLY" exception is selling the linuxsampler code commercially. Everything else is completely GPL'ed. The reason you won't find it in strict open source repositories is because of that single clause. See below:

https://www.linuxsampler.org/faq.html
Can I use LinuxSampler in commercial hardware or software products?
You are NOT ALLOWED to use LinuxSampler source code, libraries or applications in COMMERCIAL hardware or software products without prior written authorization by the authors. See here

Can I use LinuxSampler for commercial music production?
Hell, yes! Every indirect commercial usage of LinuxSampler, which essentially means using its audio output, can of course be used in commercial applications like music productions, live shows, etc. Don't get us wrong, with the mentioned commercial exception we don't want to restrict the normal user / musician, we just want to avoid somebody to directly make money with our work, that is by selling our software in a sampler product like a sampler + sample library bundle, a hardware sampler or something equivalent, at least not without giving something back to the open source Community.

LinuxSampler is not open source, you are evil!
There are of course many definitions of the term "open source", but according to the definition on Wikipedia LinuxSampler is in fact open source, since you've got complete access to its source code. So due to this fact, a normal user / musician is free to do with LinuxSampler what he likes to do, he can even adjust and tweak every single part of the software by modifying and compiling its source code. And just the fact that we want to avoid our work to be directly exploited in commercial software or hardware products is definitely not an "evil" intention. For the normal user / musician the commercial restriction is even an advantage, since that way commercial actors are forced to support this or another open source project either directly by coding or indirectly by funding and thus increase development speed.

Will LinuxSampler turn closed-source?
No, LinuxSampler will remain open source. Again, the commercial exception is just to prevent commercial exploitation by third parties that haven't contributed anything to open source projects.

I've heard the commercial exception of LinuxSampler was added at a certain version?
No, the commercial exception in LinuxSampler's license terms were there since day one. Even further it's not only there since the very first publicly available CVS (developer) version of LinuxSampler, that commercial exception was even already in Benno Senoner's proof of concept code called "EVO", which LinuxSampler was based on. There was even a rumour that we would have manipulated CVS history to "pretend" this exception wasn't added at a later point. Needless to say that this rumour is completely false as well. Think about it! We're a group of developers spread around the world who work on this project for fun and ideology in our spare time. Most of us contributed to various other open source / free software projects. Do you seriously think we would cheat on such an issue? Beside that you certainly find various people completely unrelated to this project who still have early versions of LinuxSampler and / or EVO and thus can confirm that this commercial exception was always there.


You can get it very easily regardless of the distro you are using:

Debian family (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, PopOS, etc): Use the KXStudio repository

Fedora: Use find it in the COPR repository

Arch family (Arch, Manjaro, EndeavourOS, etc) Use the AUR repository.

Open Suse: Use the OBS repository.


You don't have to compile it yourself to use it.

[Xasman]

Originally Posted by audiojunkie

Your best bet, as I mentioned above, is LinuxSampler...

Thank you, audiojunkie, for that massive missive!

I remember trying Linux Sampler a few (come to think of it, many) years ago and it was terribly unstable (as well as not seeming very user-friendly), for me at any rate, at that time. I think that experience has automatically ruled it out in my mind as an option ever since, probably unfairly as that was, as I say, admittedly a long time ago.

I'll take your advice and check out the current version, especially as you recommend it so highly.

[Xasman]

Originally Posted by Glennbo

I bought a license for Kontakt back when I ran Win7 so when I switched to Linux, I deactivated the Win7 license and reactivated in WINE. Seems I only needed to run Native Access and it was all happy.

That said, I won't be buying any additional libraries for it, or installing any new Windows plugins at all in the future, because I'm only supporting native Linux vendors with cash from my wallet.

If there were a native Linux alternative, I would buy it and retire Kontakt. I used to run GigaStudio96 and have a fairly good assortment of .gig files that do work in LinuxSampler.

I get what you say here - makes sense. My only question then is what's stopping you from retiring Kontakt now and moving over to Linux Sampler straight away?

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by Xasman

I get what you say here - makes sense. My only question then is what's stopping you from retiring Kontakt now and moving over to Linux Sampler straight away?

I'm using LinuxSampler for some things already. My goto piano is now a .gig format Yamaha grand piano from the LinuxSampler site, but when it comes to horns and strings, the Factory Library that comes with Kontakt is more playable than most of the horn and string samples I have in .gig and .sf2/sfz format.

[audiojunkie]

Originally Posted by Xasman

Thank you, audiojunkie, for that massive missive!

I remember trying Linux Sampler a few (come to think of it, many) years ago and it was terribly unstable (as well as not seeming very user-friendly), for me at any rate, at that time. I think that experience has automatically ruled it out in my mind as an option ever since, probably unfairly as that was, as I say, admittedly a long time ago.

I'll take your advice and check out the current version, especially as you recommend it so highly.

Here are some tips:

1. LinuxSampler (the engine) is separate from the GUI. You choose LinuxSampler as the option when choosing the plugin for your track, and then you open the GUI as a separate program to make the changes to the LinuxSampler engine. It's different from most plugin programs.

2. Because the LinuxSampler (engine) is decoupled from the LinuxSampler (GUI), there is more than one front end GUI available for LinuxSampler. Use Qsampler. I believe it is the easiest and the only one still getting active development.

3. When you go to load a sampler through the QSampler GUI, choose the same sample engine of the multisamples you are using. You have three options, Gig, SFZ, and SF2. Once you have chosen the engine that matches your samples, load your sample file.

4. As long as you have your midi channels set right for your keyboard, you should now be able to listen to your playing of the samples.

NOTE: There's a lot more that can be done. For example, you can load up 16 channels of samples per port, but you can load multiple ports to have as many multisamples as you need (in batches of 16) For example Port0 Channels 1-16, Port1 Channels 1-16, etc..

I really like LinuxSampler! In my opinion, it is the best native Sample player available in the Linux world for large DFD multisamples.



Edit: Be sure to not only install the LinuxSampler Engine and the QSampler GUI, but also GigEdit so that you can create/modify instruments.

Also, Be sure to install the dependencies it uses if you run into problems. It should pull them in by default in most distros, but it may not in some.

There was something else.....Oh yeah! You will notice that you don't have any controls for essential functions such as ADSR and such. Use Reaper automation and CC controls to set things exactly how you want them. Because it's automation, you can also make changes to those settings while playing.

Best of luck!

[Glennbo]

Also, because LinuxSampler is a client/server relationship, if you use multiple instances of it, you have to keep close tabs on what midi channels and midi busses you have already used, or you end up with tracks in REAPER with contention about what sample set should be loaded for a specific midi bus and channel.

[Lynx_TWO]

Originally Posted by audiojunkie

I've already been down that road. None of the sample converters can translate the encrypted monolithic formats, including Native Instruments. I've got arguably the best converter available (by ChickenSys), and it's still a "nope". Very early versions of Native Instruments samples that weren't encrypted could be translated.

This one is QUITE different; basically, you set it up to play and capture a range of velocities and notes over your set period of time (5 seconds per note, 10, 15, etc), and then SampleRobot goes ahead and plays your request through the Kontact player capturing the resultant sounds, and then builds a new instrument in whatever format you want. It takes a while, (easily calculatable based on time selection and the number of velocities and notes; I'd run it overnight), but when you are done you have a usable format to use elsewhere. I believe there's also an option to auto-find loops in the sounds for a suitable sustain. Of course, it's not going to have the scripting that Kontakt has, but since it captures the resultant sounds directly through Kontact, you already have a very usable instrument - certainly much better than converting each library to WAV through Kontact and then trying to manually build a library from those.

And yes, there's a demo.

5 seconds at 128 velocities and 96 keys would be 17.07 hours to capture, for example.

[audiojunkie]

Originally Posted by Lynx_TWO

This one is QUITE different; basically, you set it up to play and capture a range of velocities and notes over your set period of time (5 seconds per note, 10, 15, etc), and then SampleRobot goes ahead and plays your request through the Kontact player capturing the resultant sounds, and then builds a new instrument in whatever format you want. It takes a while, (easily calculatable based on time selection and the number of velocities and notes; I'd run it overnight), but when you are done you have a usable format to use elsewhere. I believe there's also an option to auto-find loops in the sounds for a suitable sustain. Of course, it's not going to have the scripting that Kontakt has, but since it captures the resultant sounds directly through Kontact, you already have a very usable instrument - certainly much better than converting each library to WAV through Kontact and then trying to manually build a library from those.

And yes, there's a demo.

5 seconds at 128 velocities and 96 keys would be 17.07 hours to capture, for example.

Ah, yes! You are correct. I was thinking of sample "converters" rather than autosample tools--I've pretty much tried all of the sample converter programs. Autosample tools don't do any conversions, but they capture the output of the instrument and multisample a new instrument. I use Bliss sampler for this. I have never tried SampleRobot, although I looked into it a couple of times. Autosample tools may indeed be the only way to capture encrypted formats like Native Instruments. It's too bad that converters don't work with encrypted instruments however, because then you wouldn't have to try to reinvent the black art of sample looping. I doubt the autolooping would be as good as the originals, but then again, except for a few formats, sample converters don't convert perfectly either. Autosample tools may indeed still may be useful in this case.