On Friday 31 August 2012 02:06:05 Nils wrote:
> I'll release a list with download links on my blog nilsgey.de in the near
> future. If the linux audio community has enough webspace we could even
> mirror most of them. Part of my mails is always the permission to
> redistribute and mirror download. You don't believe how many say "do what
> you want with these samples, but you are only allowed to download them
> exactly here. If tommorow this website will be gone there is no legal way
> to get the samples anymore"
We still have plenty of webspace, so we can mirror sound libraries. And so can
probably also do many other people from the Linux Audio community. So that's
not a problem.
> Sadly many of those instruments are in .nki or .nk* format which is the
> Kontakt Player or Kontakt Something Fullversion format. The wave samples
> are (often? by design?) there as plain files, but it is hard work to guess
> how they should be arranged and what is needed. As far as I know the
> kontakt format has more features, such as scripting, than sfz, which is
> currently the "Linux sample flagship". I hope I am wrong here.
Yes, Kontakt provides a script engine. For example some piano libraries use it
to simulate the resonance effect in a real piano (that is triggered keys
stimulating overtones of strings of other keys in the real piano).
You might want to use this tool to view the human readable xml file
encapsulated into nki files:
http://www.linuxsampler.org/nkitool/
It might give you some insight about the articulation informations, and it
helps to automate things like conversions.
> I know there are sample converter programs (for Windows) like Chicken
> Translator or the "W. Grabowski Extreme Sample Converter". I have used
> them and even simple conversions like sf2 to gig, or gig to sfz were
> always a bit odd or plain wrong. They have menu entries for Kontakt and
> EXS24 (the Apple Logic Sampler format, you see that quite often as well)
> but I don't believe that will actually produce accurate conversions.
As soon as a sample library is not just a a collection of raw samples, but
involves articulation of the material (filter, envelopes, ...), those
conversion tools will never result in a library that sounds like in its
original format. The sampler formats are simply too different. For example a
low pass filter is not simply a low pass filter. Every sampler has its own
specific filters, which have completely other characteristics than in any other
sampler. Same applies to envelopes, the curves differ completely in every
sampler. And sometimes it is even impossible for converters to apply certain
concepts from one format to the different concepts in the target sampler format
(e.g. dimension system of the gig format vs. script system of nki format).
> Is there someone who knows more about these formats? Even if it is not
> possible to write a sampler engine (it would not be the first
> [partly]binary, closed format loaded by open source software) maybe there
> is at least a way to get all the needed information to convert/correct
> them by hand or individual scripts.
Just ask. In case you want to work on converting Kontakt libraries, you
probably might just read the Kontakt manual. Should take about 2 days or so to
read through it and should be enough to understand the format from the aspect
of a sample library designer.
> For the more pragmatical, non-100%-idealist people, that would be a major
> step in general Linux Audio mainstream direction. For the last years and
> currently many instruments are samples which seem to be interpreted data
> (I hope I am not wrong here). This is not the windows-VST problem but
> actually solvable without recompiling and re-releasing even the major
> commercial instruments.
Sure! I agree with you in many aspects. It really needs a good collection of
(preferably free) sample libraries. And pushing a cross platform sampler
format like sfz might be become one would greatly improve the work and freedom
of musicians.
CU
Christian
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