Heads up! Great VST deals spotted

[Dad3353]

Just now, lowdown said:

Ah, okay...

 

[lowdown]

Another very nice freebie for the 'Free Kontakt Player'. This one is from Spitfire Audio.

It also includes a mini-course on writing for Orchestra.

 

This is the blurb from Spitfire:

 

Start your scoring journey.

Discover the sounds of our bestselling orchestra, now available in a free, easy-to-use package.

We’ve handpicked the essential orchestral sounds and articulations you need to start creating rich, cinematic music - all inside our free, user-friendly plugin.

Featuring 44 carefully curated instruments and ensembles including strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, harp, piano, and more — SSO Discover makes it easy for anyone to bring the sound of an orchestra into their tracks, whether you’re producing beats or composing your first score. 

Available to our email subscribers. 

 

Link:

Spitfire Symphony Orchestra: Discover – Spitfire Audio

[lowdown]

^^^^^

Just a follow-up to my above 'Spitfire Audio' post.

I downloaded the library, and it came in at just under 6 gigs.

 

It does sound very nice, but beware...The articulations are very limited and only consist of two variations on the instruments - Just Longs and shorts.

The rest of the articulations are in demo mode with just one playable note.

I have quite a substantial amount of SA libraries, so of course, I'm not part of the target audience. 

But sound wise, like I said, it does sound nice and authentic and may well be of use to many.

 

 

 

[BigRedX]

Has anyone come up with a way of automatically converting Kontakt Player instruments to work with Logic's ES24/Sampler?

 

Having had a poor experience with NI in the past and also having made a decision not to have any 3rd-party plug-ins that require me to install anything other than the plug-in itself, I'm not going to install Kontakt Player, which means that I've missed out on a couple of interesting instruments that have come up recently that I might have wanted to explore.

[lowdown]

4 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Has anyone come up with a way of automatically converting Kontakt Player instruments to work with Logic's ES24/Sampler?

 

Having had a poor experience with NI in the past and also having made a decision not to have any 3rd-party plug-ins that require me to install anything other than the plug-in itself, I'm not going to install Kontakt Player, which means that I've missed out on a couple of interesting instruments that have come up recently that I might have wanted to explore.

 

Presuming you haven't already tried this route, a quick AI search came up with the below. Not real-world examples, of course, but a starting point to investigate:

 

Can NI Kontakt Player instruments be converted to work with Logic's ES24/Sampler?

 

ChatGPT said:

 

Short answer: mostly no, you cannot reliably convert a full instrument for Kontakt Player into the native Sampler (formerly EXS24) in Logic Pro with full functionality. Here’s a breakdown of why and what is possible:

 

✅ What is possible

Export the raw samples from the Kontakt-library (if you have access to them). Once you have the WAV/AIFF files, you can import them into Sampler/EXS24 in Logic, map the zones, set up velocity layers etc. Logic even has an “Convert Audio → EXS Instrument” workflow. macprovideo.com+2Gearspace+2

You can create a simplified version of the instrument in Sampler using those samples — for example basic multisample mapping, basic key-range and velocity zones.

 

🚫 Why you can’t fully convert a Kontakt Player instrument

Kontakt libraries often contain proprietary scripting (using KSP), advanced modulation, filters, effects chains, custom GUI elements. Sampler/EXS24 does not support those natively. So you lose a lot of the advanced behaviour.

Many Kontakt instruments (especially “Player” versions) are locked/protected; you may not have access to the raw sample files or are prevented from repurposing them.

There is no straightforward, general-purpose tool that reliably converts a full .nki/.nkm (Kontakt) instrument into a Sampler format with all features intact. For example, older tools like Translator existed for conversions, but they had limitations. Apple Support Community+1

The format differences: Kontakt’s architecture is far more advanced than Sampler/EXS24. Simply mapping samples doesn’t replicate logic, scripting, round-robin, advanced articulations etc.

 

🔍 My recommendation for your situation

If you own the Kontakt library and access the samples, do the manual route: export or locate the sample files, import into Logic’s Sampler (or EXS24 if you’re using an older version) and recreate the mapping.

If the instrument uses heavy scripting or you don’t have sample access, run it as Kontakt inside Logic (as a plugin) instead of trying to convert.

Evaluate whether you need the full feature set of the Kontakt instrument — if you only need basic playback of the sampled sounds, conversion might be “good enough”. But if you need the advanced behaviour, stick with Kontakt.

 

If you like, I can check for specific libraries (the exact Kontakt instrument you have) and see whether there are known conversions or cheat-workarounds for that library. Would that be helpful?

[BigRedX]

I'd done a cursory search, but hadn't yet tried various Reddit and Gearspace threads that might have been more promising.

 

I suspected that it might be possible to recreate some things manually, but TBH that's more messing about than I am prepared to undertake for the sake of a few interesting looking Kontakt-based instruments. It a pity because the Logic Sampler instrument is great, but could do with some updated conversion utilities like the Akai sampler library one that would even allow the Mac to read Akai formatted discs to make them available for the conversion process.