What's new

Orchestral Tools "groundbreaking" announcements

"Layers" is the kind of idea that drove me to start learning Kontakt scripting. I think it's an ultra cool concept and to see it implemented by people who actually know what they're doing is pretty exciting. Free download, woohoo! The first one's free, kid...

Sooo...is all this new magic going to work with the Inspires and Arks I recently downloaded? Do I need updated versions, and will they cost $?

And is Kontakt really outa here? There was a brief comment at the start of the presentation that kinda-sorta implied it was somehow still involved. Or did I imagine that?

Certainly looks like it will work with the Arks and Inspires. There should be no charge to make that happen. They are not dropping Kontakt.
 
Said this in the commercial thread; new sample player OK but, I'm waiting for more info but definitely interested. More sampler options that are good, the better for us. I'm guessing this might be an OT only option but it could be open to 3rd party licensing I suppose.

The single instrument purchase option is excellent. And I'm guessing (didn't see this explicitly said though probably hinted at by others) this requires the OT sampler engine as it would side-step the multiple NI licensing burden. Wishing OT every success and I've definitely got my eye on some separate instruments already.
 
The single instrument purchase option is excellent.
It's also nice they're providing demos for individual instruments, and it looks like the information on articulations is easier to find than in the past, where you'd have to spend a bunch of time poring through the pdf and watching the walk-throughs.

And I don't see it discussed much yet, but up-to-40% off bundle deals, with upgrade pricing that factors in what you already own. Nice to see.

Of course, we still don't know what these prices are going to look like.
 
It's also nice they're providing demos for individual instruments, and it looks like the information on articulations is easier to find than in the past, where you'd have to spend a bunch of time poring through the pdf and watching the walk-throughs.
So they say. I see a lot of ambition but also a lot of time required to get all this stuff done. That will cost real money. A lot of what they are proposing to do will cost real money on a recurring basis. I don't know that they have a deep enough catalog to do all of this yet.

And I don't see it discussed much yet, but up-to-40% off bundle deals, with upgrade pricing that factors in what you already own. Nice to see.

Again, I'll wait to see how this works in practice. Even more curious that OT did not offer a discount for Ark 4 to owners of the previous Ark libraries, as they did for both Ark 2 and Ark 3.

The thing that most excites me is that they will finally have a proper user account that allows you to check if your instruments are up to date. Dumb thing to be excited about, I know.
 
So they say. I see a lot of ambition but also a lot of time required to get all this stuff done. That will cost real money. A lot of what they are proposing to do will cost real money on a recurring basis. I don't know that they have a deep enough catalog to do all of this yet...
Seems SF took on a new investor/owner a couple of years back, probably to cover the Player cost. OT might have done the same.
 
It's going to be fascinating how this will pan out.

Word will soon get round - avoid WW from this pack, don't touch the Brass from this pack, so-and-so Strings aren't great - lists will emerge online of what exactly to pick from each of their libraries, which could mean a lot of content that may never get sold at all - content that cost a lot of money to produce.

We can but wait and see I guess.... :)
I think everyone wants/needs different instruments and sounds. I already have an idea of what I want to buy to supplement what I have, but for others, they may need different things. Certainly some instruments will be less popular, either due to general popularity of the instrument (horn for example is a lot more popular than bass oboe certainly) or due to certain instruments not being so great from OT. But that's up to the individual really. I look forward to the hearty debate on this site over whether horn 1, 2, 3, or 4 is better and so on.
 
It's going to be fascinating how this will pan out.

Word will soon get round - avoid WW from this pack, don't touch the Brass from this pack, so-and-so Strings aren't great - lists will emerge online of what exactly to pick from each of their libraries, which could mean a lot of content that may never get sold at all - content that cost a lot of money to produce.

We can but wait and see I guess.... :)

I think we can view it this way and you have a point, but we could also take it from the opposite point of view : what if you're interested in only part of a big and costly library and didn't buy it due to not being able to justify the entire price tag ? With this system OT would at least get part of the revenue instead of nothing. This could really work for very specialised libraries like the Metropolis Arks, which are quite costly, where you regularly see a lot of people expressing interest on only a particular set of instruments but not the rest (Ark 3 and 4 being good examples of this).

Down the line, I could see OT trying to produce new smaller, maybe even niche libraries, without having to think of a whole new big coherent concept encompassing several instrument families. This would be cheaper to produce, and hopefully cheaper to buy too...
 
Last edited:
Seems SF took on a new investor/owner a couple of years back, probably to cover the Player cost. OT might have done the same.
Do you mean Kontakt Player licensing or development of their proprietary Player?



I've read sooo many posts these last days speculating about Kontakt Player encoding fees being exorbitantly high (most extreme one talked of libraries one fourth the cost without it, which I think is absolutely ridiculous), I have to wonder where that "info" is coming from. The only one who weighed in on that topic, whose opinion I value, is @EvilDragon who estimated everything else about making such a library costs waaaay more than the fees. If this was really such a big percentage of the retail price, then half the industry would be fucking retarded for voluntarily paying it only to get the fancy menu entry, NI Access DRM, and the Kontakt Player compatibility that only absolute beginners need since even tons of hobbyist have a full Kontakt version through their Komplete bundle. It can't be that 8dio is the only company who figured out that you can just... not pay that fee, and stick with requiring full Kontakt to run their libraries. I don't get it...


Till I know for sure what kind of DRM (if any) the new OT player is going to use, I have zero interest in it. If it's going to use iLok, it's dead to me.


I wish I could be half as hyped for anything, as some of the people here are for an entirely unproven piece of sample player software. But I don't get it...
 
I think a point about the NI fees being high makes a lot more sense once you think about OT's wish to sell individual instruments. The only way to do that in the official NI ecosytem is to have separate libraries for each one, which then really would become a significant cost for even the bigger developers. You could of course not have them as player libraries, but that limits your market considerably.

Given that they have several new features here such as the mic-blending, plus the integrated shop to buy single products, we're a long way here from Kontakt which clearly justifies going their own way. It's much harder to make a case for Spitifre currently.

Also, from the presentation video, it does look to me to be the first sample player on the market to look like it was developed in this decade. I'm not talking about the flashy graphics, but rather the ease of use to build multiple instruments, choose between keyswitches or other methods of triggering etc. Rather than these things being bolted on by the developer one instrument at a time, it looks seamlessly and elegantly integrated into the player itself. And it looks much simpler and more user friendly than the otherwise impressive VSL player.

We all wait to see how reliable and efficient it is, which are the most important things, but looks to me like they've done some really good conceptual thinking. DRM is a big issue too.
 
I'm not an OT user so I don't have any skin in the game. But two things stuck out for me:
  1. Developing (the same) libraries for both Kontakt and the new player...that'll cost dev time.
  2. Despite developing a new player, Spitfire's new releases are still mainly Kontakt based. Would be interesting to know the reasons why, considering OT are going in the same direction.
As far as I can see, the new player is as much about providing new commercial avenues for OT (tiered purchases) as much as it is for improving the composing experience. No harm in that - companies have to make coin for all of this to work. But it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
A
 
I'm not an OT user so I don't have any skin in the game. But two things stuck out for me:
  1. Developing (the same) libraries for both Kontakt and the new player...that'll cost dev time.
Not much if they have a development tool of their own that can spit out a Kontakt patch with a few modifications. I bet they do.
 
maybe they wanted to get a lot of real world testing on the ground before they move forward?
Yeah, maybe so.

It's a very interesting step though. Spitfire and now OT appear to be starting a gradual shuffle away from Kontakt. Who's next? 8dio? I must admit, I kind of like the "everything in Kontakt" world. Not so much looking forward to the Wild West future of sample players. YMMV etc.
 
But I don't get it...
I only get hyped about a player if it allows me to go behind the wrench and tinker, like the full Kontakt does. Because I have yet to buy a sample library that is perfect, and some of those imperfections can be repaired in Kontakt. Unless these libraries are mind-numbingly perfect, must-have libraries, I'm not much interested.
 
Their new sampler has some interesting features, but I'm worried about the efficiency, because CAPSULE isn't really an efficient player. But of course, I would be really happy to be proven wrong.

I also wish they would add a sample editor to their player, just like the full version of Kontakt has. (other posters have already mentioned this)
It can be simple as choosing play back start points as well as loop points. (envelopes won't do it)
Because the sample cuts of short notes sometimes can become annoying because of the inconsistencies, which was mentioned a lot in another thread.
But in Kontakt, you could edit that which makes it fixable by the user. (time consuming yes, but at least we're able to do something about it rather than waiting for a fix that may or may NOT come.)

Besides their new sampler, the ability to buy individual instruments is amazing.
 
Top Bottom