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What do you guys think of PLAY?

could not provide certain things they needed and Native Instruments refused to make the necessary changes.

And the bonus to the customer is that we never again undergo the fiasco we did when Gigastudio was so dominant and went belly up.

And what are these things that Kontakt doesn't have ? Developers always say that. And I can't see what Feature in Hollywood Strings would be superior to any other Strings Library. Same goes for Spitfires Sampler. For me as a customer I have more options in Kontakt than in any other sampler.

I gues I'm to young to know Gigastudio, but I think the possibility that East West dissapears is far bigger than Native Instruments going under.
 
So play is a Synthesizer ?
I can only compare Play to the current version of Kontakt. I tried Play 2 years ago with Diamon Strings.

No, it’s a “player” (just like the Spitfire Player) for hosting EW sample libraries, whereas Kontakt is literally a sampler.
 
Oh yes my mistake but thats another thing tha Kontakt can do and they others can't and don't want to.

"don't want to" accurately captures the difference between Kontakt and the players.

What point are you trying to make, anyway? Yes, Kontakt can do many things that Play (and Spitfire's player and SINE and several others) don't do -- and don't attempt to do.

That's common knowledge. If you want a sampler or a synth, get Omnisphere or something. Or Kontakt.

Play works fine for what it does, a limited playback device (or 'rompler' as someone above put it).

Corporate Speculation, Anyone?

As far as "which company will survive," I see developers fleeing Kontakt because all the Kontakt libraries get pirated. Gigastudio (which you mentioned) used to be in every composer's computer and it's completely gone today, for exactly the same reason.

Moreover, the proprietary players in some cases offer features that Kontakt could not accommodate.

I am not predicting the demise of Native Instruments; I have plenty of their products that are excellent. That said, the signs are unsettling regarding Kontakt being the host every developer wants when EW, Spitfire, OT and others either have developed, or would like to develop, their own players. NI have had layoffs, but so have many companies.

Long term, from an outsider's perspective, I would think that NI would benefit from making progress on piracy (and more outputs, and fees, and encoding times -- a number of issues one hears about).

No doubt they are highly aware of all that and are working on it.
 
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PLAY 6 is stable for me (Mac 6,1). I don't have a lot of libraries for it, but I like the ones I like (e.g. stormdrum). There were some problems with 5, but gone now. I think it's a nice piece of virtugal gear, actually. Good efx and pretty easy to control. No, it's not Kontakt, but - nothing to complain about AFAIC.
 
Play 6 has good performance finally, and fast load times. It has gotten me over my years of frustrations with the playback engine. I still hate the distracting and poorly executed GUI, which is all about aesthetics instead of workflow and good organization of feature categories. But now that the performance issues are out of the way, that is no longer the productivity and inspiration killer that it once was.

I thought there was a move away from Kontakt a few years ago, but I see the opposite trend this past year. The problem is that the other players aren't as stable or as feature-rich, and some even have inferior audio in comparison. The workflow is wonky for most of them, and it is difficult if not impossible to customize templates and presets. Key features are often missing from specific patches or libraries; whereas in Kontakt it's mostly at the VI and scripting level so it tends to be consistent.
 
I have said it before and I will say it gain, Kontakt crashes Logic Here more often than Play. It’s just a fact.
 
It’s just a fact.

It's also one sample out of hundreds or maybe thousands of people who have Play installed. So not saying much.

For me Play 6 has been stable too. But it's missing even basic features like keyswitching even after years of its existence. Featurewise it is way behind in my opinion. Not using the library much because I can't use keyswitches the way I that suits my workflow. I hope HOOPUS will bring some much needed streamlining.
 
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I thought there was a move away from Kontakt a few years ago, but I see the opposite trend this past year.

What evidence supports the notion that there is "a move" toward Kontakt, Mark?

I see evidence of the exact opposite, with three major developers now deploying their own players: Spitfire, OT, and East West (some time ago, as we are discussing).

I don't have a dog in this hunt -- I am indifferent for the most part, though there are some features I like about some of the players and Kontakt too. But I would think NI would be quite focused on losing such large clients' newer offerings.
 
It's also one sample out of hundreds or maybe thousands of people who have Play installed. So not saying much.

For me Play 6 has been stable too. But it's missing even basic features like keyswitching even after years of its existence. Featurewise it is way behind in my opinion. Not using the library much because I can't use keyswitches the way I that suits my workflow. I hope HOOPUS will bring some much needed streamlining.

Have you tried using articulation switching?
 
Have you tried using articulation switching?

Of course. What I'd like to do unfortunately is not possible:


It's because you can't build your own keyswitches in Play 6, and because cc1 and cc11 don't always control the same thing in the Hollywood Series.
 
Of course. What I'd like to do unfortunately is not possible:


It's because you can't build your own keyswitches in Play 6, and because cc1 and cc11 don't always control the same thing in the Hollywood Series.
It's one of the reasons I love Logic so much—the Environment allows just this sort of rerouting, easily.
 
Of course. What I'd like to do unfortunately is not possible:


It's because you can't build your own keyswitches in Play 6, and because cc1 and cc11 don't always control the same thing in the Hollywood Series.

I don’t know Cubase but in Logic Pro X I have created multi-timbral Instances of Play with up to 16 articulations assigned to 16 MIDI Channels with an Articulation Set for e.g. HS Violin 1 so that I can switch articulations easily on the fly or after the fact , hosted in Logic or VE Pro 7. I get to decide the order and be reasonably consistent between the instruments in the whole Hollywood Orchestra.
 
I don't completely hate it, but it doesn't run as smoothly as kontakt. It takes longer to load and it's been more unstable for me. I will say stability has improved over the 4 year's I've been using it.

I am currently phasing EW out of my templates until I can release the subscription to CC. I don't think any of the EW collections are really good enough to justify sticking with PLAY. Not because PLAY is the absolute worst (it isn't). Not because EW stuff sucks (it doesn't), but because the industry has really bloomed in the last several years and HO feels outdated and clunky to use now.
 
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I agree that inconsistency was certainly a goofy decision. Anyone know if you can easily reassign those in PLAY?

It's not possible in PLAY. You need to do it in your DAW, or use a third party plugin to do it.

I don’t know Cubase but in Logic Pro X I have created multi-timbral Instances of Play with up to 16 articulations assigned to 16 MIDI Channels with an Articulation Set for e.g. HS Violin 1 so that I can switch articulations easily on the fly or after the fact , hosted in Logic or VE Pro 7. I get to decide the order and be reasonably consistent between the instruments in the whole Hollywood Orchestra.

That's exactly what I did in Cubase too. For my workflow, I want long articulations dynamics to be controlled by cc1, and short articulations dynamics by key velocity. Due to PLAYs limitation re keyswitches, and due the inconsistent use of cc1 and cc11 in the Hollywood orchestra, this not possible in Cubase. As I posted here:


It's possible with every other sample library I own. In Cubase, it is not possible with Hollywood Strings. That's a fact. And I think it tells something about the feature-set of PLAY, and the inconsistencies of the programming in HO.
 
It's not possible in PLAY. You need to do it in your DAW, or use a third party plugin to do it.



That's exactly what I did in Cubase too. For my workflow, I want long articulations dynamics to be controlled by cc1, and short articulations dynamics by key velocity. Due to PLAYs limitation re keyswitches, and due the inconsistent use of cc1 and cc11 in the Hollywood orchestra, this not possible in Cubase. As I posted here:

Well that is not a keyswitiching issue, It is true that in regard to MIDI CCs the entire HO is wildly inconsistent with how instruments respond to them. But the ability to make your own keyswitches in Play would not solve that.

So your issue is not really Play as much as library implementation.
 
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