Acoustica User Forums

Hi,

Just downloaded Kontact5 because I want to use a choir/voice-building vst. There are quite a few out there but most need Kontact5.

How can Kontact5 interact with Mixcraft7 please? Ideally I want to build choral voice backings to tracks I make in MC7.

Many thanks,

Update: loaded K5 into my VST folders and it comes under under vst's on the virtual track - think I'm half way there? All I need is to download a Kontact-friendly vocal software & I should be all set to go?

Experimented with Kontakt about 5 years ago but saved K5 to a separate hard drive (to save on C drive space), I don't think I ever got K5 to work that way. Seems to be working okay now though (hope)

On my YouTube channel (link in my sig) are several videos about using Kontakt from square 1 to setting up a multichannel relationship between Mixcraft and Kontakt. You may find a few answers there.

More specific to your question(s) you did not specify whether you have the full version of Kontakt or the player. With the Kontakt player you are restricted to "official" Kontakt libraries which will appear in the library tab and for that privaledge the developer pays a hefty fee to NI which of course is passed on to the consumer.

If you have the full version of Kontakt a veritable universe of 3rd party developers (who have paid no fee and therefore have no reason to pass that expense on to the customer) whose products cover the whole gamut of prices is opened to you; usually you get what you pay for.

There is no such thing as 'Kontakt-friendly libraries. (A few users on these forums would suggest it's impossible to use 'Kontakt' and 'friendly' in the same sentence ). There are libraries that are compatible only with the full version of Kontakt and there are libraries that will work in both the player and full version. As far as recommendations, without knowing which version of Kontakt you have and your budget I can make none, but Google is your friend.

(A few users on these forums would suggest it's impossible to use 'Kontakt' and 'friendly' in the same sentence).

I've come to accept that tolerance for pain varies. My position is life's too short.

Thanks, I have the player version. Realivox – Blue by Realitone say they pay a license fee to Native Instruments so that Realivox Blue can be used in the free Kontakt Player.

realitone.com/blue/

Comments please?

Thanks

The only suggestion I can make is that you might want to get Kontakt Player installed and working, become familiar with the included instruments and use them a while before spending any money on additional instruments. You may find it works for you or you may as I did, find it frustrating and time consuming just to get started.

In my example, Quite some time ago I purchased it in my search for better bass guitar VSTi and added Scarby P-Bass.
It sounds great and has potential. I simply just cant justify the time and effort to get satisfying results. I guess I could revisit now that I have more experience, but.... it left a very bad taste.

But if you find it more intuitive, and that product works anything like the presentation, that could be very useful!

Thanks,

Downloaded several free demos to Kontakt Player, all but one successfully opened in the player and I was able to use them with the midi keyboard in Mixcraft7 virtual track mode.

Kontakt is daunting because the interface is so different but at least I can get some sense out of it.

So far so good.

What problems might I expect please?

The two biggest issues I have discovered are the background loading which is supposed to be a "feature" but actually is a pitfall for the impatient. When you first load your project everything will appear to be finished loading, BUT Kontakt will actually be loading more samples in the background so that if you try to play your project it will sound like crap because of missing samples, etc. I find it best to open the UI of my last instance of Kontakt and wait until the progress bar shows totally loaded before proceeding (in larger projects enough time for a cup of coffee).

Secondly, it is best to spread your instances of Kontakt over different MIDI channels especially if you are using a lot of CC# automation. With some libraries there seems to be cross talk between Kontakt instances on the same channel even if they are on different tracks.

Thanks Chibear,

Initially I went for Realivox Blue by Realitone. After three days of abortive downloads I gave up and was refunded, the unzip process was stripping the files of content. I need choral effects so I went for Olympus Elements by Soundiron. This software download had its own unzipper, so I succeeded - after one single glitch - in getting Olympus onto my DAW. No missing content pop-ups from Kontakt Player. Then it's man overboard I have no idea about midi, apart from a mild learning curve in Mixcraft . But I discovered I could cheat, by selecting the choir bank I like best, then selecting it on a MC7 virtual track, I could play midi piano notes underneath in a parallel virtual track, then drag it onto the MC track assigned to Olympus. Then when I play the track back I get the Olympus choir singing the midi piano notes.

But.

How do I work midi in Olympus / Kontakt please? Olympus has its own midi window I presume, where you can apply effects like 'swell' and so forth? Or do I really use the Mixcraft piano-roll midi panel to work Olympus? This I find really confusing at the moment.

Thanks again,

chibear wrote:On my YouTube channel (link in my sig) are several videos about using Kontakt from square 1 to setting up a multichannel relationship between Mixcraft and Kontakt. You may find a few answers there.

It's nice you put these up. This is where the developers could improve and make it much more simpler to use.

kitekrazy wrote:

chibear wrote:On my YouTube channel (link in my sig) are several videos about using Kontakt from square 1 to setting up a multichannel relationship between Mixcraft and Kontakt. You may find a few answers there.

It's nice you put these up. This is where the developers could improve and make it much more simpler to use.

Kool B)

A direct link would also be cool

This video is really helpful thanks, I'm going to follow it as soon as I have some food & coffee down my throat

https://youtu.be/GdedrmwFylg

Thanks yes it was helpful, but it's a road map to another library, not Olympus. So I followed it as far as I could & appear to have got a result: my Alesis Q25 midi keyboard is now synched to the keyboard in Kontakt Player, but whether that was my doing or whether it happened by default only time will tell.

Still can't see the awe-inspiring midi controls the other videos show for Olympus in Kontakt but what the heck, Mixcraft has its own midi modeller, I am quite happy with that.

See what you mean about the loading time. For days that has phased me, thinking I'm doing something wrong, when it's just the waiting game. After several minutes, if you have hooked up properly, the Kontakt keyboard colours up and the notes start playing. Only today I can really play those notes with my midi keyboard, not just the mouse.

The full version of Olympus, if I ever get that far, concerns me by its sheer size. In theory I could load it to a secondary hard drive (which would solve everything instantly) but in practise you are warned to load everything to the poor old C drive. So I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So far so good