Virtual Istruments

[giovanation]

Hi Everyone ,I use DP,and I want to purchase a virtual instrument.I am leaning towards Kontakt 3 and/or Powersynth.I would like to hear about peoples experiences.

[sparqee]

Kontakt is great. Very powerful, very flexible. There are lots of sample based VSTi's based on Kontakt (my favorite being Scarbee Black Bass).

[giovanation]

Thanks for your opinion Sparqee.I have a few synth modules but want to try something new.Powersynth by Spectrasonic is getting some big hype,sounds great but may be a little to tekno for me.thanks again.

[richiebee]

What sort of music do you write? Its hard to think of a more versatile VI than Kontakt, but it probably needs further purchases down the road of good sample libraries (it's a slippery slope to bankruptcy!). Its the ONLY VI I use in every single project. I can't think of one that I haven't used it on.

Depending on what you're doing, it may be unnecessary.

[giovanation]

At this moment I'm working on 2 projects one classical, (modern)another jazz but not smooth jazz... more electric, with guitar.I hate to use the word fusion.You can check out something I've done recently at Audio: Home Recording Studio (Music) / Recording Software am a guitarist.I use synth modules via a GR1 to pre pro then redo it all with musicians.For the current projects I definitely need good orchestral sounds,and also something modern.What about ram .I have an Intel mac with 3 gigs.Is that going to be an issue if I install,Kontakt and or powersynth.

[sparqee]

Well, orchestral libraries are notorious for being RAM hungry but 3GB is certainly a healthy amount. There are ways to compose which can maximize your resources. You work on a part, print it to audio, unload those samples, load another group of samples, compose, print and so on. Kontak has a lot of great functions for optimizing RAM use but... if you have a specific need for orchestral & jazz sounds you might check out the Garritan Orchestral Libraries. They're having a sale right now where several of their complete libraries are priced at just $100. I'm not sure if you need Kontakt for them or if they come bundled with their own VSTi player. You might check it out at Garritan Home Page

[giovanation]

Those are all good ideas,thanks guys.