MOTUnation.com

it's funnny that you mention that layers thing. i had to use K2 for the first time in a few weeks because the conversion in M5 was a bit lame and i ended up with all of these layers for a single sound. then after about 5 minutes of fumbling through patches in K2 i remembered why i dislike it so.
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all of that nonsense

2. What would be a good sample library for drum sounds that are more dance oriented. Specifically, I want good snares, good rides and a plethera of cymbols. This seems to be where my current selection lacks.

Have you checked out the sample cd's from Vengeance Sound? http://www.vengeance-sound.de/eng/indexFLASH.html

The CD's contain both loops and single drum samples (Wav format). Here are some links to the demo mp3's (included links to the bass and fx cd too)

Essential House Demo : http://www.soundwizard.de/Sounds/Vengea ... mosong.mp3
Essential Club Sounds Vol. 1 Demo : http://www.soundwizard.de/sounds/Vengea ... mosong.mp3
Effects Vol. 1 Demo: http://www.soundwizard.de/Sounds/Vengea ... l1Demo.mp3
Ultimate Bass Demo : http://www.soundwizard.de/Sounds/Vengea ... ssDemo.mp3

matwell wrote:I own both, and my vote is for MachFive. Overall, I use MachFive for everything except Giga-converted files. For some reason, I was never able to get Giga-files (especially with layers, and release triggers) to convert properly. Each layer and release trigger always ended up as it's own, separate preset in MachFive!? So, I'm using Kontakt for all my Giga-converted files, and MachFive for everything else.

Also, I love MachFive's GUI. Kontakt just seems so PC-ish to me. It's not very intuitive when it comes to editing, although it is powerful.

Matwell-- this seems to be the conclusion that hits closest to home for me as well. I'm still comtemplating which to buy first-- wanting both for M5's tidy interface and K2's power. Some days you just want to get an arrangement done with decent sounds. On other days, the demands of more complex audio configurations exceed the confort of convenience and simplicity.

Still waiting for more info on M5 v2, though...

Although my Kontakt demo has now expired and Mach Five doesn't currently have a demo version available, I am leaning towards Mach Five based on my overall experience with MOTU software vs. Native Instruments software.

The GUI just seems to allow for a more intuitive and flexible work flow. The drawback, asides from release date slippages, is the lack of native libraries, but as long as translations work well, that shouldn't be a major problem.

And as far as translations go, the newest problem seems to be that most samplers are turning into software ROMplers and thus have less commonality than before, making it harder to do 1:1 translations than with older libraries.

But this would be a problem for any of the major samplers. And I guess that then starts to push people towards the samplers with the perceived "best" libraries, taking us back to the early days of hardware sampling .

In some ways, standalone VI's supplant the need for software samplers for many of us, unless we see ourselves doing major sound design. In my case, I save that time for creating fresh sounds vs. fine-tuning natural or otherwise recorded sounds. But in the area of background sounds for movies, there is an advantage to manipulating "natural" sounds vs. synthesized sounds, so a software sampler is still on the agenda.

At any rate, I didn't like ANY of the Native Instruments demos that I tried (and I downloaded every demo available). I understand that FM7 has a new version coming out soon (presumably a better GUI), and certainly the current Kontakt is an improvement on the previous, but in general I find that MOTU GUI's seem to be informed more by how musicians actually work (putting aside the infamous incorrect instrument ranges of MSI).

mhschmieder wrote:...Then I suppose with MacIntel slowly erasing the boundaries between mac-only and Windows-only apps, one should also consider E-Mu's products...

not to pick on you, but I really wish people would stop saying that. it's similar hardware but they're still totally different OS's.
Linux runs on the same hardware too, but Linux and Windows programs are not merging together. Beos ran on the same hardware.

do a Google search and you'll find a ton of OS's you never heard of running on the same hardware. they have nothing to do with Windows. Windows has nothing to do with Intel (or AMD or any other chip maker). there used to be a version of Windows that ran on PPC's.

again, not picking on you, it's just making me crazy seeing people saying this constantly and it goes totally unchallenged.

or maybe I'm totally wrong!

bb

No, I simply didn't phrase it very well. By "erasing the boundaries", I meant that Mac owners can now run Windows apps. Not that the apps themselves are "blending" in some way or that the OS's are "merging". Sorry for the confusion.

mhschmieder wrote:No, I simply didn't phrase it very well. By "erasing the boundaries", I meant that Mac owners can now run Windows apps. Not that the apps themselves are "blending" in some way or that the OS's are "merging". Sorry for the confusion.

sorry, I just keep reading people saying "they're becoming the same now, since the intel switch".

annoying.

bb