kontakt or mach five? help me decide

[rumble]

i'm in the market for a software sampler and i can't decide whether i should get kontakt or mach five.

i only have a g4 933 running 10.3.9 and dp 4.61.

kontakt 2 really needs a faster machine but i think it might have more features or be better supported than machfive, but machfive might intergrate
with dp better (but would i still be maxing out my cpu?)

the other thing is kontakt can be had cheaper via a non-profit discount.

any pros or cons about these 2 packages?

thanks

[Frodo]

With either sampler, you will quickly find yourself working "at the gills" with a 933 G4. With that processor, I would recommend running the samples from a 10K external drive (eSATA, for example) to make the most of the seek and transfer times.

There will also be limits with both in terms of available RAM paging (as virtual memory funnels data and streams audio in a timely fashion). You will have to watch the numbers of sample patches you use at the same time.

As stated often:

OSX needs about 500 MB
DP needs about 256 MB

That leaves you with about 450 MB.

Avoid tracking with reverbs and fx...

Bounce instrument tracks to audio before mixing-- and dump the samples (always back up your original project first!)

Now.

MachFive is 2 years overdue for its promised version 2 release. It's not clear what's going on. Getting M5v1 may be enough for what you need, but with such a long delay with no clear release date, you may be stuck should you choose to get an Intel Mac. Positive thinking would inpsire the notion that v2 will be available by the time you decided to get a new computer.

Kontakt-- yes, support is quite energetic for this, which is as good a reason as any to get K2. How nice to be able to choose a tool based upon musical needs. MachFive's sample import is not as reliable as it might be, and without M5v2 it's almost not fair to compare it to K2.

So here are some questions that I hope might help you make the best choice for your needs:

1. What *are* your musical needs?
2. Are the sounds you need for your projects more readily available or easier to assemble with MachFive or K2?
3. Will these sounds converrt more easily in M5 or K2?
4. Would it bother you if there were no M5v2 UB down the road and you had to get Kontakt anyway?
5. At what point will you get a new computer as the limits of the 933 begin to hold you back? Virtual Instruments present enormous challenges to even the best Macs, and while they are *compatible* with a diversity of machines, the software is constantly being updated to accommodate the latest processors in mind moreso than older machines.
6. Are you only investing in "today", or do you have plans to expand your library as your hardware is updated?

MachFive-- presently a short term investment and/or a device for developing one's own self contained sample libary. Good for older Macs under MAS, but it may not import all third party collections. Limited native M5 support on the market....

K2-- robust third-party support and lots of K2 *native* formats are readily available with no format conversion necessary. It might challenge a G4's horsepower and may require working with smaller instance counts or smaller numbers of samples loaded.

Both samplers put out wonderful results, but give some thought to your musical needs and weigh them against your hardware's technical capabilities.

(Can you get your RAM up to the full 1.5 G? The extra 250MB would cover DPs requirements with the remaining 1.2GB for all else. It can make a difference, every little bit helps, and RAM for the G4 is quite cheap these days.)

My personal vote at this point would be for K2 if only one had to be chosen. I bought M5 and still saw/felt a tremendous need for K2 because of the broader native support for it. Knowing nothing about M5v2 for so long has had a tremendous impact as well.

If you have other Native Instrument romplers, many of those samples often work better in Kontakt rather than the bundled Kontakt/Kompakt players that ship witih them, giving the user more flexibility.

[rumble]

thanks for the great reply.

yes, i plan on trying to get myself a dual g5 at some point as the prices fall for used machine.

i'm starting to hit a brick wall with the 933 just running dp with 16 tracks and a couple of reverbs & other plugins, and i can't quite figure out what to increase the buffer to in dp to make things run more smoothly. a lot of my tracks have pasted in parts or are made up of little overdubbd parts (as opposed to one contiguous track) and i haven't gotten into freezing tracks yet.

a friend has k2 and dp and told me about a bug in k2 that corrupted samples so that was another reason i haven't bought it. (i guess it's in the way the patches are saved, so there's at least a way to circumvent that if you remember to do it a certain way..)

it's all boiling down to getting a faster machine though, another thing is i want to get reason at some point too so a faster machine is my only solution.

thanks again

[RCory]

rumble - If you're planning on getting Reason, sooner rather than later might be your best option. Reason is very CPU friendly and comes with a sampler to boot.

C

[rumble]

sorry.. i meant reaktor...

[garymadi]

i'm in the market for a software sampler and i can't decide whether i should get kontakt or mach five.

i only have a g4 933 running 10.3.9 and dp 4.61.

kontakt 2 really needs a faster machine but i think it might have more features or be better supported than machfive, but machfive might intergrate
with dp better (but would i still be maxing out my cpu?)

the other thing is kontakt can be had cheaper via a non-profit discount.

any pros or cons about these 2 packages?

thanks

Sooner or later you'll have to migrate to an Intel Mac if you're after a career. I just bought Kontakt 2.2. I'm not pleased with MOTU's replies to my questions on MachFive V.2's arrival date, I bought it plannng on upgrading to Ver.2...so try to think about where you'll be in two years and do you want to deal with a company that doesn't keep its users in the "loop". There are posts on this site about other software companies that have been pretty honest about the early debut of the Intel Mac's and what it did to their develpment schedule.

[Khursor]

I Use K2 and M5. I like the M5 editing interface better. K2 has MUCHO better support. K2 is still buggy in UB and, like most NI stuff, uses RAM WAY TOO liberally. The biggest problem with both is file management. I'm not sure why these manufacturers continue to build software that handles bigger and bigger libraries without tricking out the database and catalog functions at the core level of the software. Giga's QuickSound is a good model to emulate and build on. The database should be as active as the user, keeping up with changes, edits and reorders in realtime without having to use clunky search functions or browsing through file trees. Naming protocols and classifications should be user definable. M5 is extra weak in this department. Too many whistles and bells, not enough nuts and bolts. Nothing worse than opening a template after a month and for some mysterious reason M5 can't find the samples contained in a preset, even though you haven't moved any data around.

I'd wait until after NAMM before deciding which one to buy. If M5 V2 is coming and it matches PSP protocols, it'll be the softsampler to beat. MOTU is entirely crappy about paying attention to its customers inquiries, but the end result when something DOES come out is usually worth the wait.

By the way, using a cheap FireWire 7200RPM RAID 0 array is substantially faster than SATA 10K drives for sample delivery. You can also get a ton more storage for the same money.

Personally, I use a couple 1TB GRAID2s for my main sample library and have no latency issues in DP even while running 30 instances or more across a dozen plugins. This is on a Quad 2.5 PPC with 8GB RAM. If you can't spend the cash for the GRAID, just use 250GB FW800 drives in the meantime. I originally replaced my internal SATA 10Ks with the FW drives because the SATAs couldn't crank hard enough. Plus, they're still stupidly expensive for the amount of storage you get in relation to gaining another 2800 RPMs.

Until EVERYBODY gets on board with UB, especially Spectrasonics, keep your G5 PPC. You also won't get any substantial benefit from Intel Macs until OSX goes 64-bit native. Guess you just have to decide when to spend your money.

[Frodo]

...By the way, using a cheap FireWire 7200RPM RAID 0 array is substantially faster than SATA 10K drives for sample delivery.

Hmm?

Please expound, kind sir...

[utility531]

I also have both samplers. K2 certainly is more compatible and comes with a great set of samples. It supports keyswitching as well. M5 also comes with great samples and is easier to use in some ways. However Motu is going on 2 years since it promised to put out version 2. Keyswitching is supposed to be out with M5 version 2 (whenever that is!) Ideally it would be good to have both. If I was in the market for a sampler today knowing what I know about the lack of support for M5 I would not give it the time of day and I would go with K2.

[Rogue Scrunt]

I owned kontakt 1.2, and MAch 5.

I used and liked both.


For a while, I switched to Ableton Live.
Mach 5 would not work with Ableton at all no text would show up.

I ditched both software sampler, and picked up an Akai s6000. I love it, a very full featured sampler.


good luck