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I'm thinking of getting a library which is only available in ESX and Kontakt 2.2 format. As I understand it Mach Five is supposed to read these formats, but thought I should get your confirmation before placing my order.

Anybody here who can share their experience?

You better test it before to buy.

A friend of mine bought Scarbee Bass (Kontakt) and I tried to load it in MachFive2. It took several minutes to load a preset, and once I played a key... instant crash. Forget it. Don't even think.

I can tell you that MF2 can easily convert almost every hardware sampler format I checked (Akai, EMU, Roland... didn't check Kurzweil though). I found out that it reads Akai and Roland patches converted with EXS 24 or Kontakt, with minor issues (stereo split files). The trouble begins with native Kontakt or Giga libraries, with extensive layers and articulations: I didn't find a way to read it with MF successfully, but actually I didn't spend much time trying.

Thanks a lot for your reply!

My experience with MF is that regardless of what the manual is stating one better check new things out before putting any money in it.

Anyway - the library I'm talking about is quite inexpensive so I took the chance of downloading it yesterday, and so far I can tell you that at least the EXS format (sorry for my misspelling in the subject line) seem to be working fine. I haven't tried the library in Kontakt format yet. The library I'm talking about is a 8-layer upright piano by Imperfect Sampling. I've successfully converted the patches to .M5b, and all samples/layers seem to respond well.

brgds

Just a thought, but you could try downloading Soniccouture's freebie "Speak and Spell." It comes in Kontakt and ESX formats. Then see what happens when M5 tries to convert.

scooter