Frozen Plain moves away from Kontakt

[mickeyl]

Yet another – this time even a very small developer – moves away from Kontakt (https://frozenplain.com/frozenplain-and-kontakt/).

Apparently they decided on this some months before and have something already. Here's an overview of their "MIRAGE" engine:

[riffwraith]

Hmmmm - must not be too expensive to produce a player? Just a guess.... I really have no idea what these cost. Anyone have any idea, or know anyone who might?

[kpc]

I think we are going to see more of this kind of thing. Like all the streaming services coming. People want to control Th entire widget.

[tack]

I understand this trend, but I wonder about the long term impact on performance. For example, the Bohemian instruments on UVI are sssooooooooo sllllooowwwwww to load compared with even my heaviest Kontakt instruments. I haven't tried Spitfire's new player myself, but I've read about complaints related to performance and memory consumption.

I feel like the sampler platform itself needs to be entirely commoditized and open source. The secret sauce is elsewhere. Maybe HISE will get us there.

[Guy Rowland]

I feel like the sampler platform itself needs to be entirely commoditized and open source.

It's a fine and worthy dream.

[NoamL]

I wonder if we will ever see the major developers start licensing their samplers to other developers. OT letting other developers use SINE, or Spitfire letting smaller developers into the SFPlayer ecosystem.

This seems like a necessary step for next gen libraries. Kontakt is going nowhere, of course it still works just fine, but development has been stagnant and isn't serving the needs of orchestra sample developers.

[d-healey]

Maybe HISE will get us there.

That works for me!

[FriFlo]

I wonder if we will ever see the major developers start licensing their samplers to other developers. OT letting other developers use SINE, or Spitfire letting smaller developers into the SFPlayer ecosystem.

I guess, Spitfire would have to pay the developer for using their software! :-)
Otherwise, I could imagine library developers being interested in engines that are in some ways more advanced than Kontakt. Sine, from what we have seen until now, certainly could be that ... but on the other hand, I don't think, OT will license their software to others. They programmed it to offer unique selling points, crafted especially for their libraries and concepts. Offering it to others would be like starting the next Native Instruments. I doubt that is where they wanna go.
But ... they might be interested in spreading out their wings and grabbing more shares of the samples market. They already did hint at their event at upcoming libraries from new venues in LA. So, I suppose, on the long run Sine will more then return its development costs ...

[Blake Ewing]

I guess I'm the only one who still likes kontakt. I don't want to learn a new player for every developer. Haha.

I think spitfires long game is to become like native instruments. Makes sense from an investor's standpoint as an additional revenue stream and they've already shown a willingness to work with featured artists (HZ, OA) and other developers like Pendle/Sounddust.

[Guy Rowland]

I seem to recall the possibility of Orchestral Tools opening up Sine being discussed, probably speculatively, because it sort of has a shop front built-in. I'm not personally convinced all the new features are quite as wonderful as some seem to, AFAIK it can't do background loading and performance is yet to be tested. But it certainly looks a lot better than Spitfire. In either case a 3rd party would then presumably be charged a fee, have to wait for admin etc, which is theoretically no better than Kontakt.

[wst3]

But it certainly looks a lot better than Spitfire. In either case a 3rd party would then presumably be charged a fee, have to wait for admin etc, which is theoretically no better than Kontakt.

Tis all speculation until someone gets their mitts on it.

This last part is the rub though...managing third party developers will be an expense in time and money for OT, and no one (including OT) knows if they are well positioned to do so. Similarly, third party developers will have to pay some form of license fee, and will presumably have to wait for keys, although part of being suited to the task would include managing that aspect better.

I was still using GS when Kontakt arrived. There was a lot of hubbub, but I'd already invested a princely sum in GS libraries. At some point Garritan introduced GPO, which looked like a good idea at the time, and that came with Kontakt Player 2, I have no idea how well NI handled 3rd party developers in those early days, I do know it's been a bit of a roller coaster ride (presumably on both side) ever since. With the exception of delays for encoding it certainly appears that they understand the landscape now. No reason to believe that OT can't use that as a head start.

[FriFlo]

I'm not personally convinced all the new features are quite as wonderful as some seem to, AFAIK it can't do background loading and performance is yet to be tested. But it certainly looks a lot better than Spitfire.

Exactly my thought. I am missing the same feature (which is missing also in the Spitfire player). It might be not quite as trivial to achieve it ...
But be assure: I won't jump o either of the new players. Others make way better beta testers than me! ;-) The only difference is, I already know that the Spitfire Players is a step back from Kontakt in almost every way and - I repeat - it will probably take more than 2 years to make it comparable. With the OT player, there are some interesting features that were not available in Kontakt. We will have to wait and see ...

[Guy Rowland]

Oops, posted in the wrong thread, as a few posts got moved.