MOTUnation.com

Since Mach Five is new, there are few if any sample libraries sold in that format.

Regardless of whether Mach Five itself or Chickensys is used to do the translation, is there a particular format that is recommended as the ideal import format for Mach Five?

I only have a few sample libraries at moment (as mentioned in another post, they are Yamaha A-series and will not translate due to their unique anti-piracy scheme and so will have to be rebuilt by hand from individually saved WAV or AIFF files).

There are several specialty libraries I am looking into for instruments not covered by the "big" libraries, so I'm not sure which format to buy them in (Akai, Kontakt, Halion, etc.).

They are all listed here

http://www.motu.com/products/software/machfive/specs.html/en

I find that Giga samples are quite good. I also think that I am losing a lot of the capabilitiy such as key switching etc. Hear that will be covered by 2.0 upgrade to MAchfive - whenever that comes out.

EXS24, soundfont, akai all seem to convert fairly well. If I could do this all over I would get GIgastudio But...only made for a PC (have both MAC and PC but prefer MAC) I find (might be mistaken) most of the higher end orchestral stuff is built for Gigastudio - Garritan and Vienna and Miroslav.

MAchfive certainly does work quite well once you get it set up and going with samples. As you know the samples that come with it are quite good as well. Having access to much better samples without loops and great onboard effects and storing lots of samples on big computer hardrives makes all the difference (coming from hardware samplers)

Good Luck!