HELP with Kontakt: Bosendorfer / Steinway sounds

[SteinwayTony]

I want to get into this Kontakt thing I've been hearing much of.  The way I understand it is, you hook up a MIDI keyboard to your computer, and you record yourself, and you can buy these Kontakt things which are sets of pre-recorded sounds (you can get like a huge Bosendorfer or Steinway sounds).  You play it back, and it's all digital and crisp and stuff, and your crappy old Roland has magically become a Steinway model D.

I have questions, though:

- What software do I need exactly?  Do I need separate software for the pre-recorded sounds and the software that reads the MIDI signals?

- Are the sounds reliable for dynamics and phrasing?  How does it measure how loud or soft you play?  Wouldn't it depend on the quality of your keyboard?

Your answers will be greatly appreciated, great or small.

Thanks in advance,

Tony

[willcowskitz]

Do you mean Native Instruments' sampler?
https://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?kontakt_us

You need a program that can read MIDI input and interpret the MIDI data for the sampler that plays the sounds. There are many different software that can do this, though I can't really name one independent program that would do just this, you could try music making/composing programs such as Nuendo or Cubase.

The dynamics of course are read from the physical keyboard itself, so you should have a touch sensitive keyboard for that (I myself have one (evolution MK149)).

[xvimbi]

I want to get into this Kontakt thing I've been hearing much of.  The way I understand it is, you hook up a MIDI keyboard to your computer, and you record yourself, and you can buy these Kontakt things which are sets of pre-recorded sounds (you can get like a huge Bosendorfer or Steinway sounds).  You play it back, and it's all digital and crisp and stuff, and your crappy old Roland has magically become a Steinway model D.

I have questions, though:

- What software do I need exactly?  Do I need separate software for the pre-recorded sounds and the software that reads the MIDI signals?

- Are the sounds reliable for dynamics and phrasing?  How does it measure how loud or soft you play?  Wouldn't it depend on the quality of your keyboard?

Your answers will be greatly appreciated, great or small.

Thanks in advance,

Tony

For what you want to do, KOMPAKT may be all you need. Some of the samples come with a watered-down version of KOMPAKT, in which case you won't need anything else. Concerning the quality, go to https://www.eastwestsamples.com/details.php?cd_index=841 for a Boesendorfer sample. Check out the demos. They have demos for other samples as well.

Be warned, for best results, you'll need a fairly powerful computer. It is best to go to the websites of the sample/sampler manufacturers. Latency is a big problem, so before you shell out hundreds of $$$, make sure your setup will be adequate.

[SteinwayTony]

Be warned, for best results, you'll need a fairly powerful computer. It is best to go to the websites of the sample/sampler manufacturers. Latency is a big problem, so before you shell out hundreds of $$$, make sure your setup will be adequate.

I have a Pentium 4 running at 2.4GHz.  I think the RAM is 256.    Hard drive is 160GB.

You lost me at "latency is......" , so can you elaborate?  Thanks!

[SteinwayTony]

Another question: which is preferred...the PMI Bosendorfer, or the Galaxy Steinway 5.1?

Here is a link to the Galaxy Steinway:

https://www.eastwestsamples.com/details.php?cd_index=895

[xvimbi]

Another question: which is preferred...the PMI Bosendorfer, or the Galaxy Steinway 5.1?

Here is a link to the Galaxy Steinway:

https://www.eastwestsamples.com/details.php?cd_index=895

Your ear or your wallet need to make that decision.

Concerning your computer, it sounds OK to me, but you may want to up your memory to 2 GB, preferably even higher.

The most prgamatic and important (IMHO) definition of latency is the delay between hitting a note on the keyboard and hearing the sound. Keep this in mind when you inquire about the details of the candidate samplers.