Orchestral Tools moves away from Kontakt!

[Tobias Escher]

Hi folks,

good to hear most of you are looking forward to the new platform. I certainly am, but I am biased
I'll try to reply to questions as good as I can. If do not reply to something, then I can't

I can confirm that we plan to have all existing collections ported to the new platform.

<< That thing is going to be huge, and I’m concerned that’ll be a big draw on resources.
Not in my experience. It actually loads surprisingly quickly and is not huge at all, neither in file size, nor in RAM load for empty instances.

<< As I understand it, you balance a mix that you like, press the magic button and it generates a bespoke mix.
yes, that's exactly how it works.
<< But for what? One articulation? One instrument? The entire library?
EDIT: Turns out the system works slightly differently: it will merge all articulations of the instrument you invoke the Mic Merge on. The reason is that we want you to be able to load other articulations later on without having to go through the process again.

<< Also whilst it would be able to reduce the streaming overhead and RAM use, it would increase the storage requirements.
yes. You have to die one death

<< One thing I’d love to see, but very much doubt I will, is the ability to split mic positions up onto different drives.
I actually do not know how the UI implementation of the storage system works exactly, but that would at least be theoretically possible some day in the future. I'm basically answering this to let you know that you can voice it as a feature request if V1 does not support it

best

Tobias

[Guy Rowland]

Great answers, thanks Tobias. Especially pleased to hear its light on resources with all that going on.

You likely can't say or is unknown but just in case you can - is there a rough ETA for the player?

[Tobias Escher]

I truly have no idea yet. Things are shaping up nicely and I have in fact yesterday made some doodles with the new player. But it is a long road and there is more to it than just playing back a few samples.

EDIT: I was curious re. different mic positions on different drives, so I dug into the concept. As I speculated, it is possible from a technical side but the downloader will by default only ask for a folder per collection. But since you can choose which positions to download, you can download a first batch to drive A and a second batch to drive B. Bit complicated, but it works even in version 1! Maybe this can be improved in later updates!

[lofi]

As long as all these newfangled samplers remain closed to 3rd parties I don't think it could be considered a direct competition to Kontakt on the whole... Again, it's just one segment of a larger market, and dare I say not a segment that is in majority.

I'm 100% with you here ED.
Also, these are "only" sample-players.
So it's more like buying a plugin or a synth than a actual sampler.

But it's great to see developers finding new ways to improve playability and upping the game for others.
In the end I believe that we, the users, will benefit from this.

So best of luck OT!

Things are shaping up nicely and I have in fact yesterday made some doodles with the new player. But it is a long road and there is more to it than just playing back a few samples.

Looking forward to take it for a spinn

Best,
Anders

[Tanuj Tiku]

Hi folks,

good to hear most of you are looking forward to the new platform. I certainly am, but I am biased
I'll try to reply to questions as good as I can. If do not reply to something, then I can't

I can confirm that we plan to have all existing collections ported to the new platform.

<< That thing is going to be huge, and I’m concerned that’ll be a big draw on resources.
Not in my experience. It actually loads surprisingly quickly and is not huge at all, neither in file size, nor in RAM load for empty instances.

<< As I understand it, you balance a mix that you like, press the magic button and it generates a bespoke mix.
yes, that's exactly how it works.
<< But for what? One articulation? One instrument? The entire library?
for whatever is loaded in the "Instrument" you clicked on. That would generally be all articulations of that instrument if you loaded the whole instrument, or just the articulations you specifically loaded.

<< Also whilst it would be able to reduce the streaming overhead and RAM use, it would increase the storage requirements.
yes. You have to die one death

<< One thing I’d love to see, but very much doubt I will, is the ability to split mic positions up onto different drives.
I actually do not know how the UI implementation of the storage system works exactly, but that would at least be theoretically possible some day in the future. I'm basically answering this to let you know that you can voice it as a feature request if V1 does not support it

best

Tobias

Thank you for the info Tobias!

[FriFlo]

Is there gonna be background loading of samples into ram with this new player? I like the idea that the player is gonna make everything sound better, although, so far that is only a sales pitch and we have to see, if that theoretical improvement will work wonders when playing the samples. :-) But there is always the danger of making steps backwards, like having much longer waiting times on booting your session. Even VSLs own player has to load all samples into ram. Before that, your DAW is locked ... Well, it is free! That is a good thing, so I can just try everything out, once the thing becomes available.

[Guy Rowland]

FriFlo - the VSL player streams from disk just like all the others AFAIK, and you can set how much gets loaded into RAM depending on your disk. I'd be surprised if OT's player were any different from that basic concept.

As we all know however, efficiency at this process can be wildly variable. These days Play is pretty good, but it used to be atrocious and stands as a permanent scarring experience for the whole community - "look, this is what happens when developers make their own players". At least we have VSL at the other end of the scale, where the process has always been smooth AFAIK. I still find that thing incredibly confusing though. (dreadful tangent, but if anyone has any good tutorial video recommendations on how the VSL grid system works, I'll be all eyes and ears - I just fight with the thing til I've bent it to my will).

I don't think anyone other than Kontakt currently can background load on demand when playing notes, that is a great feature.

[FriFlo]

I know it is gonna be DFD. I was talking about background loading, which is a Kontakt 5 feature - maybe 6 years old now - I am not sure! Maybe you have gotten used to it so much, that you don't realize it is something that was not available from the start! :-)
Background loading means, each Kontakt instance will only load the sample, each instrument with its script and then your DAW (or VEpro) becomes available for use to you. After that, everything gets loaded into ram, but you can already use your sequencer and even play. Before that was available, had to wait for every single sample to be loaded into ram (of course only the parts, that need to be loaded, the rest still got read from disk, as is now). Vienna Instrument doesn't have that background loading feature. I think nothing except Kontakt does.

[Guy Rowland]

Ah yes, I'm well aware, it was this that threw me:

Even VSLs own player has to load all samples into ram

..but see it in context now! We both actually made exactly the same point re Kontakt being alone in that regard...

[FriFlo]

... and there is the same thing with purged samples. When you play Kontakt with purged samples, it detects which notes you play and only those get loaded into ram. But you can still play in real time. Of course, you may get some problems with playback, in case your SSD can't handle it. But it works quite well. The same thing applies with purged microphone sets. With Kontakt you may enable that mic set and start playing right away. The sample get loaded in the background. I haven't used EW Play for quite some time, so I am not sure about them. But all VSL players are always locked until all the sample content is loaded into ram.
The more I think about it, the more it looks quite hard to me to program a sample player with all the finesse that Kontakt offers. I really hope OT will succeed, but I am skeptical wether they will match all these features under the hood of Kontakt - those, you usually don't notice, as they just work and make your life easier.

[FriFlo]

Ah yes, I'm well aware, it was this that threw me:

Even VSLs own player has to load all samples into ram

..but see it in context now! We both actually made exactly the same point re Kontakt being alone in that regard...

Alright, I didn't read all posts and overlooked that background loading has already been mentioned. :-)

[Daryl]

Vienna Instrument doesn't have that background loading feature. I think nothing except Kontakt does.

You can set it to load upon receiving a MIDI signal if you like.

[FriFlo]

Vienna Instrument doesn't have that background loading feature. I think nothing except Kontakt does.

You can set it to load upon receiving a MIDI signal if you like.

When you do that, what will happen exactly? Do I have to wait until all samples are loaded or can I start playing right away?

[Aoiichi]

i don't know if someone could activate every mic in berlin brass main with a 64 gig machine or not lol.
I've got 25 instruments(without all the articulations) loaded and im in the 70gs.... Learning so much stuff at work(and setting up a new standing desk arrangement at home) while also reformating recently, half of my stuff isnt even installed yet(so template is on the back burner)

One thing that is an annoyance when working is the feeling of needing to ration mics or articulations. It's not too bad running purged with SSDs, but it's still a minor nuisance that exists that'd I'd prefer didn't. The concept of mixing-down your own custom mixes is pretty interesting, with some libraries like CSS that come with a default mix generally I like the sound but feel it could do with a bit of tweaking. CSS's, for example, I feel like could do with just a hint more of close. But to do that I've got to adjust all the mic levels together, and without the ability to then mix that down to a single I've lost the ram efficiency.

Also, nice mockups Kyle!

[EvilDragon]

which is a Kontakt 5 feature - maybe 6 years old now

Background loading was introduced in Kontakt 4.1, released June 1st, 2010, so that makes it almost 9 years old now.

[KyleJudkins]

One thing that is an annoyance when working is the feeling of needing to ration mics or articulations. It's not too bad running purged with SSDs, but it's still a minor nuisance that exists that'd I'd prefer didn't. The concept of mixing-down your own custom mixes is pretty interesting, with some libraries like CSS that come with a default mix generally I like the sound but feel it could do with a bit of tweaking. CSS's, for example, I feel like could do with just a hint more of close.

one thing that I played around with was using 2 instances, EQ matching the mic I wanted to get closer to, then using the gain to dial between them.

i.e. I like my percussion to sound more distant, so I'd use the surrounds as a reference against the dennis sands mix in cineperc - then just use reverb send and the EQ match to push it back a little.

Also, nice mockups Kyle!

not sure "mo" where the letters you were looking for XD. Looks like march might prove to be the earliest I can do much of anything - right now I have about 3 hours from when I get home from work until I need to be sleeping.

which needs to be spent eating, prepping my uniform for tomorrow, and showering(and some exercise?). I'm just happy to open my seed of a template and play with whatever is currently loaded - to help relax at this point

[Geoff Grace]

Best,

Geoff

[NoamL]

JXL Brass announced for Dec 16th release: https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/collections/8

[Lawrence]

16 mics! Released on 12/16! Coincidence??

[ok_tan]

16 mics! Released on 12/16! Coincidence??

...and 666 666 samples O_O

[Lawrence]

Mic merging sounds like a great idea to save resources, although I’m not sure anyone will be able to load all the mics to try to merge them. Still, nice idea-and ala carte downloading is another one.

[Guy Rowland]

Really hope the new player and ecosystem works well and efficiently, would be good for us all if it did. I definitely don't need this brass library, but particularly interested in smaller, specific downloads of products in future if they allow that.

[Guy Rowland]

There's a new video up about their Sine player. Sadly it doesn't really tell us anything new as far as I could tell, and hardly any look at the interface even, but this is part of a series so hopefully more will become clear before too long. I really do want Sine to be good.



There's some pretty pictures at the website here, but again a bit of a dearth of new informaiton at the moment (unless I missed something):

https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/get-sine

[Stakk]

Does it play a sine wave? :-)

[FriFlo]

So far, this is all theory, as we will have to see, how well the Sine Player works and if all these adaptive legato and release feature will make the samples sound better or be more playable. But it kind of looks like this player could indeed be better than using the same samples on Kontakt. The only thing I miss are background loading features. Other than that, you will of course miss the opportunity to use multi scripts to shape the midi coming in. Putting this aside, Capsule was great but very resource hungry. So, I could see myself switching to this player. Maybe not upon release, but after some time after doing some testing.
This is the complete opposite of Spitfire Player. Currently, I would not buy any library released on it exclusively and I would avoid switching to the player as long as possible with my previous content. There simply is not reason to, as all you do with that player is loose features and possibly have problems with your DAW, if you happen to be unlucky. Why take that risk for something that won't give you anything that Kontakt didn't already have plus rob some existing features?
Looks to me like OT has done it way smarter than Spitfire - of course I will have to wait for the actual release to see, how it goes ... I will have to wait for existing libraries will be available, as the JXL-Brass is not my kind of library and JXL is not my kind of guy. :-)