# Pros/Cons of Monolith-ing samples?



## PaulWood (Mar 10, 2009)

Hi guys,

I have recently spent a lot of time converting samples from old disks into Kontakt and tidying up the programming etc.

Now I have things "fixed", I was thinking about turning various instruments/samples into monoliths for ease of moving around/archiving.

Are there any pros or cons to the idea of monolithing instruments? Aside from the obvious (that the samples are then not editable at sample level / single samples can't be extracted etc.)?

I remember reading (a LONG time ago, so probably Kontakt 1.5 or early days of 2) that there were some problems with monoliths - samples corrupting etc. Is this correct? And if so, is it still the case?

Thanks!

Paul


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## TheoKrueger (Mar 10, 2009)

I think you need to be a developer to be able to create your own monolith, OR they do it at NI after you license the use, OR they send you some sort of Monolith maker key for developers. I could be wrong but i remember not being able to save as monolith.
I vote for having your samples in sample folders, you never know when you might need to edit a single sample and not being able to... 

Cheers,
Theo


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## Big Bob (Mar 10, 2009)

Hi Paul,

Anyone can save to a monolith .nki file. (Theo, I think you are thinking about things like .nks files, etc which are copy protected). The advantage of a monolith is it contains all the samples for the instrument and therefore can be moved around willy nilly and it will always have access to its samples. The disadvantage is the .nki file is much bigger. However, assuming the samples are not initially copy protected, you can always re-load your monolith file and then re-save it as Patch + Samples and separate out the samples again.

Maranatha,

Bob


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## Frederick Russ (Mar 10, 2009)

I seem to be getting better performance out of saving huge heavily scripted instruments as monoliths especially for Mac. There was a wall that was hit early on with VSL in EXS24 which Andreas at Redmatica was able to resolve by reducing high sample counts by sample merging. Monoliths do improve both sample loading and performance for Mac especially for really large instruments - at least here.


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## rJames (Mar 10, 2009)

I've run into a strange problem with monolith files that you create yourself. They seem to be different in some way from the factory monolith files.

I ran into a limit in the amount of zones I could load much faster if I was using samples (as opposed to monolith files). So, I created my own monolith files. They fixed the problem BUT they loaded at about 5% of the speed of the monoliths created by NI.

My advice is NOT to create your own monoliths.


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## PaulWood (Mar 11, 2009)

Thanks guys!

Well, different answers there. I will try it out this afternoon and see what the performance is like with loading.



> However, assuming the samples are not initially copy protected, you can always re-load your monolith file and then re-save it as Patch + Samples and separate out the samples again



Thanks Bob. That was something that was concerning me too, but as you *can* do that, that is a vote in favour. Just down to performance now!

Cheers!

Paul


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## polypx (Mar 11, 2009)

Paul

I think the main drawback of a monolith is that you can only have one instrument looking at those particular samples. Whereas if you have a folder of samples, you make endless variations of instruments that all use the same sample set, without wasting all that hard drive space duplicating monoliths.

cheers
Dan


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## TheoKrueger (Mar 11, 2009)

Big Bob @ Wed Mar 11 said:


> Hi Paul,
> 
> Anyone can save to a monolith .nki file. (Theo, I think you are thinking about things like .nks files, etc which are copy protected). ...



Yes Robert, that's what i had in mind and thanks for pointing out the difference. I should also try out the end user monolith sometime... just to see what its like 

Thanks,
Theo.


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## PaulWood (Mar 11, 2009)

polypx @ Wed Mar 11 said:


> Paul
> 
> I think the main drawback of a monolith is that you can only have one instrument looking at those particular samples. Whereas if you have a folder of samples, you make endless variations of instruments that all use the same sample set, without wasting all that hard drive space duplicating monoliths.
> 
> ...



Hi Dan,

Thanks for the reply. Is it not possible for several NKI files to reference a monolith (as you can by saving NKIs within Kontakt from the NKS files of copy protected Kontakt Player libraries)?

Even though I would have several NKIs, just being able to clean up all that sample data would be a help...!

P


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## Frederick Russ (Mar 11, 2009)

As I understand it, a monolith contains samples just for that particular instrument - samples are not shared among different nkis which is one drawback.


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## Thonex (Mar 12, 2009)

Frederick Russ @ Wed Mar 11 said:


> ..... but hey you're the expert in all matters Kontakt.



heh... I *wish* I was..... :lol:


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## polypx (Mar 12, 2009)

Paul

I just tried this, but couldn't get it to work. If I save one instrument as a monolith, then delete the samples, THEN I try another instrument that uses the same samples, how do I point to the monolith?

If I use "Browse Folder" or "Browse File" the monolith is greyed out.

I'm curious if it CAN work, so if you could check again and tell me how you point the the instrument at the monolith, I'd really appreciate it.

cheers
Dan


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## gmet (Mar 12, 2009)

Dan,

You should only need to point to the folder, not the monolith itself. Kontakt should then automatically find the samples.

Justin


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## polypx (Mar 13, 2009)

Hmmm. Still doesn't work, I just get stuck on the can't find sample page again if I do that. 

I wonder if it's a Mac / Windows thing? I'm on Mac.

cheers
Dan


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