KSP is hard

[Joakim]

Well we obviously have different views when it comes to this and I am not going to argue it any further.

But my initial question was to OP who is just starting out and learning. I don't think he is going to create a massively complicated instrument to begin with. So a more user/beginner friendly approach might be interesting.

 

[d.healey]

Every new HISE library is a separate plugin (to my understanding - do correct me if I'm wrong),

Pretty much. HISE has an expansion system which is currently rather experimental but it allows you to load multiple sample packs (individual products) into a single plugin. It could be used to make a custom player plugin. I tried it but my plans were quite ambitious so I decided to go back to individual plugins. I'm still exploring the use of expansion packs in order to divide products into smaller packages. For example instead of buying my entire woodwind collection you'd be able to get it one instrument or a group of instruments at a time.

Also there is supposedly a HISE player in the works but when it will appear nobody knows.

which eventually would (and I assume will) bloat everyone's plugin lists in DAWs, etc...

Depending on your DAW's plugin manager this isn't really a problem. After all Kontakt only offers a list of encoded libraries (which now has a search feature!), the quick launch, or the regular file browser. The search facilities in some DAWs are far better and make it much easier to organize and find instruments.

 

[Lindon]

And also don't forget that for many, many, many people, Kontakt acts as a hub to all their sample library. Simply because there's so many libraries available for it. Every new HISE library is a separate plugin (to my understanding - do correct me if I'm wrong), which eventually would (and I assume will) bloat everyone's plugin lists in DAWs, etc...

Dave covered this one I think..

Also, try doing bigger libraries (dozens of thousands of samples in a single instrument, lots of groups, modulation and FX going on), then tell me how HISE fares.

It fares pretty well actually - and is a whole lot LESS painful in terms of setting up your samples (yes I've heard of Creator Tools). The XML based approach is so much more 21st century......I can use ANY scripting environment to build out my sample maps - and HISE is smart enough to load ONLY what I need...YMMV.

"Might"? It has a huge number of unique installs in the world. People love buying Komplete because of all the goodies, and all the extra available 3rd party stuff for Kontakt doesn't hurt.

true...But for everyone who doesnt want to cough up $1200.00 for stuff they might never use ....

Or some of the actual KSP functionality, like the recently added user zones and drag&drop samples directly on the GUI, MIR functions, XY pads, dynamically reordering FX without needing to resort to C++ (according to documentation I found you have to do this if you want that in your library?)... etc. Or use LFOs that go above 10 Hz without resorting to the source code of the sampler or scripting your own, heh...

Right using this weeks new KSP feature to decide its a better tool is a bit of a long bow dont you think?

But yes MIR functions (also brand new)
but X/Y pad - well no that capability has been in HISE for a long time
Re-ordering FX? yep Kontakt its easier for sure - I've had it in our Kontakt libs for several years - users dont really care about it in my experience
LFOs above 10Hz ? You mean like up to say 40Hz? Already in HISE

Yeah, I know I'm biased. I have every right to be.

Sure - but you are incorrectly informed on some points, and you ignore others: for instance
- HISE OpenGL paint routines - you want a vector based knoB? or a range slider? sure write your own with a few lines of javascript code
- "sensible" panel based approach - no 5 panel limit, panels have children that inherit parental display settings...ugh all that KSP code to just get the UI to draw properly...
- Modulating modulators , which are modulated by modulators... you get the picture.

Well I could go on... but look I've spent 10 years building pretty sophisticated Kontakt instruments, and I will use it again if I cant get the product done in HISE - but if I CAN get it done in HISE then wild horse wouldn't drag me into building it in Kontakt. Each environment has its advantages and disadvantages. I suggest you explore all of them.

 

[EvilDragon]

Right using this weeks new KSP feature to decide its a better tool is a bit of a long bow dont you think?

No. If you need that feature for your library then of course it's a better tool.

LFOs above 10Hz ? You mean like up to say 40Hz? Already in HISE

Docs say 10 Hz. Still far cry from Kontakt's 213 Hz.

but X/Y pad - well no that capability has been in HISE for a long time

Didn't find that in docs? XY pad in KSP supports up to 16 cursors.

panels have children that inherit parental display settings..

ui_panel in KSP does the same.

- Modulating modulators , which are modulated by modulators... you get the picture.

This is also possible in Kontakt?

 

[d.healey]

Kontakt's 213 Hz.

That's not an LFO. That's just an O

HISE goes up to 40 from what I can tell, docs must be out of date. It's probably possible to go higher with custom nodes but not something I've explored.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well no if you check some other synths their LFOs can go well into audio range. For example Waldorf's synths. In Kontakt it just exploits the modulation system's processing rate to the max.

 

[storyteller]

Weird thread.

 

[INCIRIOS]

Also, try doing bigger libraries (dozens of thousands of samples in a single instrument, lots of groups, modulation and FX going on), then tell me how HISE fares.

One of the unique things about HISE is that you don't need lots of groups. What took 450 groups in kontakt takes 9 instead, possibly down to 5 with HISE. You can do things a lot more efficiently almost universally, and it encourages stepping back to think of the best way to do things.

The joy of writing without the limitations of KSP, and add in the ability to include your own C++?

Incomparable.

 

[EvilDragon]

I suppose depends how you do your mapping in Kontakt... But yeah if you can purge per zone in HISE, that is an obvious benefit. However, everything depends on what exactly you want to do in your library. Sometimes there's no real way around having hundreds of groups, for this or that reason.

 

[INCIRIOS]

I suppose depends how you do your mapping in Kontakt... But yeah if you can purge per zone in HISE, that is an obvious benefit. However, everything depends on what exactly you want to do in your library. Sometimes there's no real way around having hundreds of groups, for this or that reason.

Being able to dynamically add "groups" (or even better, multimic enabled groups in this case) is something kontakt is not able to do, as far as I'm aware, so definitely a big plus on HISE.

 

[Hans Adamson]

I want to give credit to Native Instruments for creating KSP and the initial KSP manual/tutorial that gave musicians (like me) that had no experience of computer programming the chance to creatively develop scripted sampled instrument with a relatively small effort. Recently I have studied and tried to learn C++ and it has really dawned on me how well done and easy to follow for a complete beginner the initial KSP tutorial was compared to anything similar I have studied for C++. I don't know if the initial manual/tutorial is still available, but if it is, I recommend it as the best way to learn KSP if you are new to computer programming.

 

[EvilDragon]

That old manual can probably be googled away, but here it is:

 

[Takabuntu]

I scanned through this thread, but I couldn't find any info if you are a programmer or a software engineer. I've been doing software engineering for more than 20 years in one form or another. Every new programming/scripting language that you learn has its challenges and there's a (steep) learning curve. But there's also a lot of similarity, once you know how to properly program. In essence syntax is just a way of conveying a solution. Some languages are hard in that respect and some may be are easier. Good luck in your KSP endeavour.

 

[Lindon]

Well no if you check some other synths their LFOs can go well into audio range. For example Waldorf's synths. In Kontakt it just exploits the modulation system's processing rate to the max.

Ok well if you used HISE you would know that you can use scriptnode and SNEX to have an "LFO" that worked at the audio sample rate - so all the way to 96KHz (utterly useless by the way) - at this rate all its doing is +/- each sample - just silly. Of course you may well be doing this to attempt to make your LFO into some sort of oscillator - which would again be pointless in HISE as you get a very rich set of oscillators given - in fact I've built (and shipped) a synth in HISE that doesn't use samples at all.

But this is again turning into a silly thread - and after I promised myself I wouldnt argue with you or anyone else here about HISE functionality until they've done something beyond reading the (very out of date and incomplete) documentation.

So here's my full disclosure:

I build software VI's for a living.
I do it in Kontakt - with many many dozens of instruments over the last 10 years
I do it in HISE - with over a dozen shipped over the last 12 months

I have no financial affiliation with Native Instruments or Christoph Hart

Mario?....

 

[EvilDragon]

(very out of date and incomplete) documentation

Would be great if it were actually complete and up to date, then.

 

[Lindon]

Would be great if it were actually complete and up to date, then.

yes of course it would, but it's been mentioned here (in this thread and in others) that its very out of date and incomplete yet you continue to quote it as the true state of play. Why are you doing that?

 

[EvilDragon]

Well if they don't want me to quote it as true state of play then they better update it. I don't have time to delve 100% deep into it with incomplete documentation, that's a waste of time.
And also seems like HISE's answer to everything is "well you can do it yourself if it's not in there". While I can certainly see the benefit in that, you cannot say that it's also at the same time a negative point. If they want to convert more Kontakt devs, they'll have to offer more complete functionality out of the box without requiring 3rd parties to code their own solutions for something that's not there but is there in Kontakt. Then again, there will always be developers that are happy to do just that, and I'm not saying anything against that. It's just not for me, personally.

(utterly useless by the way)

It's not useless if you want to do AM/FM etc.

 

[Lindon]

Well if they don't want me to quote it as true state of play then they better update it. I don't have time to delve 100% deep into it with incomplete documentation, that's a waste of time.
And also seems like HISE's answer to everything is "well you can do it yourself if it's not in there". While I can certainly see the benefit in that, you cannot say that it's also at the same time a negative point. If they want to convert more Kontakt devs, they'll have to offer more complete functionality out of the box without requiring 3rd parties to code their own solutions for something that's not there but is there in Kontakt. Then again, there will always be developers that are happy to do just that, and I'm not saying anything against that. It's just not for me, personally.



It's not useless if you want to do AM/FM etc.

Again...wrong - and now not even bothering to read the documentation that is there:

HISE | Docs

Official HISE documentation

docs.hise.audio

See that button on there marked "Enable FM"? -- you get FM out the box - no need to use some modulator to fake it, so who's the "well you can do it yourself if it's not in there" culprit this time? Looks like Kontakt to me...Dont get me started on the FM module in scriptnode.

It's beginning to look like you haven't read enough of the incomplete documentation (still waiting for the KSP V 6.2 documentation by the way so its not a one way street on this "out of date" docs stuff) , and sure if you dont have the time to do so then that's absolutely fine, whats less fine is having incomplete information and then quoting it as if its comprehensive and correct. Again: why are you doing that?

It's beginning to look like you have some agenda. So one more time:

So here's my full disclosure:

I build software VI's for a living - for lots of different people.
I do it in Kontakt - with many many dozens of instruments over the last 10 years
I do it in HISE - with over a dozen shipped over the last 12 months

..and again one more time let me invite you to offer your full disclosure.

 

[EvilDragon]

See that button on there marked "Enable FM"? -- you get FM out the box - no need to use some modulator to fake it

Sure you do need it if you want to FM any parameter that is modulatable, not just modulating one sound generator with another. I saw docs for that module (and in fact, I've read nearly all of what's available, just to counter your point) and that wasn't what I wanted.

It's beginning to look like you have some agenda.

As if you don't know where my (let's call it that, although it's not quite that) affiliation lies. But this doesn't prevent me to use other samplers or whatever. Or at least attempt to use and then hit too many stumbling blocks, as in this case. That's all I'm gonna say, and apparently since this thread got too weird for some, I'm over and out.

 

[INCIRIOS]