Favorite sources for multisample libraries?

lopodyr · 2024-02-15T21:27:50.661Z

Hello!

As I am spending more time with my DAW lately, I wish to acquire sample based-instruments (think « Kontakt »).

I am curious to know sources that people liked to find these instruments? I know about Kontakt of course, but also the free Decent Sampler, Spitfire Audio, and Soundpaint. I also know about the Ableton Packs (and I imagine a few other DAWs offer similar products).

I am particularly interested in stand-alone options that are not just additional Kontakt libraries or packs for a DAW, though, honestly, I’m curious to discover more, even if I would not buy

So, what are your favorites? And which ones do you know that I have not mentioned? I would really love recommendations to get more choice.

The list so far:

Multisampled instruments

Spitfire Audio (some free, especially LABS and BBC Orchestra Discover)
Decent Sampler (some free)
Soundpaint
Soundghost
F9
Felt Instruments (I just remembered this one, which I love)
Ableton Packs (Ableton Live only)
Native Instruments Kontakt
The Crow Hill Company (Vaults are free)

Awesome recommendation for sample packs

90s CD samples
Samples From Mars
Elektron Sound Packs
Palettes from Polyend

MuttBeats · 2024-02-16T00:36:57.287Z

For drum machine samples, I would always recommend Samples From Mars. Seriously good quality and their bundles are excellent value.

Good synth samples too.

jdaddyaz · 2024-02-16T02:29:06.706Z

https://archive.org/details/audio?tab=collection&query=90s+sample+cd

m0ld · 2024-02-16T03:15:30.890Z

Came here to post this! Absolutely incredible collection.

jdaddyaz · 2024-02-16T03:21:37.253Z

For reals. All you need really.

holonology · 2024-02-16T10:14:48.662Z

So as others have mentioned, there’s a few levels to this, and I’ve explored a few of them I think. Currently on a bit of an exploration around multi-sample sample packs.

At the ground floor level the Samples from Mars collection is freaking awesome. There aren’t many total no brainers for music production, but this one of the few. I bought the Essentials collection and ran the synths through Preset Maker and while it’s a small sample of the whole collection, they are perfect for creating Ableton instruments. I think the full packs maybe come with pre-made instruments for the DAW which the Essentials doesn’t? Probably going to upgrade to the full thing at some point.

There are a couple of others that, depending on taste, also make great little instruments. I really rate Soundghost - they only have a handful of instruments, but they’re always good (mostly based around ambient/chill/lo-fi music.) Then there’s F9, who has some awesome multi-sample instruments, more around house & other commercial-ish sounding electronic gear. A lot of their stuff is multi-samples of classic gear, while the Ableton store packs can err on the side of esoteric at times. I’d put the 2 above in a similar category to SFM, except that their collections are a lot more limited and specific to genre.

Ableton sells some add on packs too as you mentioned, and some of these are pretty decent. I’ve picked up a few of the freebies, but there’s paid stuff too - really this would be to taste.

Between those 4 you have a lot of material to work with. The one thing I would say is that, unlike Kontakt, a multisample Ableton Instrument Rack is 100% backwards compatible, so literally anything you buy/create in this department will basically always work. I think this is an underrated factor when looking at these packs. You don’t have a manager or some big software downloader, nor do you have to deal with Kontakt 6, 7, and presumabuly in the future 8 and 9 and 10 and so on. You just… load the rack. With Live 12 getting a better preset manager, it should (in theory) start to become a bit easier to integrate your 3rd party packs with Ableton’s own categorisation. I’m liking the idea of working more directly in Ableton because of the potential of these multi-sample packs.

But since you mention it, you can’t really ignore Kontakt for multi-sampled instruments. There are 2-3 levels of pricing here, ranging from dirt-cheap to astronomical. Being as Kontakt is industry standard, a lot of professionals use it and the price of some libraries reflects that. As is well documented, the dirt cheap ones usually require full Kontakt, which means getting into the NI ecosystem. If you’re a hobbyist, to me it probably makes more sense to get Komplete Standard/Ultimate and just work with what NI brings to the table, as there is a hell of a lot there without needing to go to 3rd party vendors.

If you’re going beyond NI, there are some awesome pack makers out there, though some of them can get very expensive very quickly. I couldn’t even begin to list the players in this space, but at the hobbyist level there are quite a few well known players. Think Heavyocity, Teletone Audio, Output, Soundiron, Project Sam etc, etc. Then there are some huge libraries by companies charging professional money, such as Spitfire Audio, Strezov Sampling, Audio Imperia etc.

lopodyr · 2024-02-16T12:33:51.607Z

Wow, this looks like a gold mine. But these are sample packs, right?

lopodyr · 2024-02-16T12:36:41.494Z

Sound Ghost has some really interesting packs! Thanks for the recommendation. I love that they make packs for various hardware too, that’s really neat.

I have the Sample From Mars collection as you mentioned. They often make it really affordable. Some of the packs in there are my favorites, though, mostly for one shots.

As you mentioned though, I am mostly looking for playable multisampled libraries, and Kontakt is an obvious reference. I do not wish to use it for various reasons, but it’s true that one of its strength seems to be its wide adoption.

holonology · 2024-02-16T13:01:24.992Z

Yeah, Soundghost are amazing I love their stuff. Their packs are great too, and they put so much into all their releases.

As a wildcard, you could also consider Arcade by Output. This is technically both a sample library and a pre-made Instrument Rack (but in VST form.) So it’s like you’ve subscribed to Splice - aka: it’s the samples that you’re subscribing to - but instead of negotiating a traditional sample pack interface, you just get a playable sample pack. The trade off is, you gain ease of use (no clunky downloader & file management) along with a playable interface, but you don’t ever get to keep the samples directly on the hard drive as you would with a traditional Kontakt instrument or sample pack.

I almost didn’t get Kontakt because I like how simple it is, and there are days if I’m wrangling a Kontakt library, that I wish I had stayed with it. But back to SfM, if you have the samples, check if the instruments are pre-loaded. If not, using something like Preset Maker you can have yourself a whole universe of sampled synths as instruments all racked for Ableton. I slept on this a bit, so I’d recommend exploring that depending on the version of SfM you have.

It used to be the norm that sample packs would come with a C0-7 of every note. But these days, you’re much more likely to see G# Random Sample.wav which means you really need a key mappable software/hardware that automatically creates samples if you want to use Splice style packs.

Kontakt is a blessing and a curse in some ways. Once you’re in and you have access to that world, it’s kinda hard to go back to something that doesn’t have as much in the box. NI get a lot of heat and I agree with some of that, but I also get a shed tonne of mileage out of the sounds. You can essentially get most of the things you’d want for electronic music just with Komplete Standard, or even just Kontakt 7 itself. But I can see why you might want to stay away. On Black Friday, Arcade was £50 for a year, and given that Komplete Standard is £250 and lasts 2 years, there is even an argument that Arcade is a better value, if you can stomach the subscription model and the lack of sample downloads.

lopodyr · 2024-02-16T13:38:34.332Z

Yeah, I’m only uncomfortable with Kontakt because of its business model, as well as the storage space required. Which I don’t have haha.

I looked at the instruments in SfM packs and they are great! But they focus on sampling hardware. They sound amazing, but when it comes to synths, I like to make my own patches most of the time.

When it comes to multisampled libraries, I am looking for acoustic instruments primarily. Especially if they are not yet another strings ensemble. I like acoustic sounds that I would not find easily in the world around me.

I think I will end up buying some of Ableton’s packs for stuff like traditional instruments from India, that kind of sounds. I am also trying to stomach the price of Spitfire’s Heirloom pack. I really want it, but it’s priced like the kind of tool a hobbyist like me should not buy haha.

At any rate, I am still interested in all of that information. Arcade is an interesting concept. I think I like the “collecting my favorite sounds” aspect too much, but it’s still a really original concept.

jdaddyaz · 2024-02-16T14:37:26.692Z

The old sample cds that everyone use to use on their Akai samplers.

lopodyr · 2024-02-16T14:48:27.855Z

That’s great! I would like to dive deeper into Jungle and some other 90s sampler goodness. I’ll browse around, thanks for sharing

I was only asking because my original question was about multisampled instruments (like a violin in your DAW you can play with your keyboard and sounds super realistic). I did not mean “sample packs”.

I’m not trying to push away your recommendation, I just wanted to clarify that this thread is not a remake of the other “sample sources” threads on the forum.

holonology · 2024-02-16T15:34:32.352Z

lopodyr:

Yeah, I’m only uncomfortable with Kontakt because of its business model, as well as the storage space required. Which I don’t have haha.

When it comes to multisampled libraries, I am looking for acoustic instruments primarily. Especially if they are not yet another strings ensemble. I like acoustic sounds that I would not find easily in the world around me.

Ah OK, I hear where you’re coming from. Interestingly, one of the features (and why it’s so snappy to use) of Arcade is exactly that. While a Kontakt patch is usually quite literally loads and loads of samples, the Arcade engine only uses a very limited sub-set which makes it much less taxing on the computer.

I do understand the resistance to NI - I go back & forth on it myself these days. And I don’t want to drag the thread into an NI sucks/doesn’t suck, otherwise we’ll get away from getting you the info you’re looking for. For all the issues with NI, including how technically out of date things are at times, you can at least sell their stuff if you don’t like it. Which is more than you can say for Spitfire and other similar companies. Once you’ve paid for that library - there’s no going back.

So honestly if I could suggest a one-stop-shop, it’s that maybe Arcade or Kontakt (even just on its own) because it seems like it ticks at least some of the boxes for you. While it does have synths, it covers a lot of bread & butter acoustic sounds.

You could even start by just getting Komplete Start and use the free one. The way to get into it is to get Heavyocity Foundations (also free, works with Kontakt Player) and The Free Orchestra 1 & 2 (which has more than just strings.) This costs nothing and doesn’t take up too much space, so might be a good short-term option… Also note, this gets you a “crossgrade” to Kontakt, so then you could pick it up in summer at a steep discount. Looking at the Heirloom plugin, full Kontakt on sale costs less than that single instrument.

I think that alongside Komplete Start, Labs, Pianobook, and Soundpaint, you could maybe include the new Crow Hill freebie, which is from Spitfire Founder CH - so perhaps unsurprisingly it looks along the same line of Labs. You could make an argument that with these freebies you likely wouldn’t need anything else.

On the paid side, I’d say Arcade if you’re OK with subscriptions and don’t want a hard drive full of stuff, and meantime explore Kontakt & the free options out there.

lopodyr · 2024-02-16T15:43:20.559Z

Hmm, interesting. So, Kontakt is not a subscription? I thought it was. You mentioned it “lasting 2 years”. Is it a “version” system? Like a DAW? You buy a version to use forever, and you can pay to upgrade? Or do you buy for 700 days then it expires? That part is not super clear to me.

Also, The Crow Hill is a good reference. I did not include it for personal reasons (which would really derail this thread). I added it to the original post for everyone’s attention. Their Vaults seem to be really good.

holonology · 2024-02-16T16:20:54.261Z

lopodyr:

Hmm, interesting. So, Kontakt is not a subscription? I thought it was. You mentioned it “lasting 2 years”. Is it a “version” system? Like a DAW? You buy a version to use forever, and you can pay to upgrade? Or do you buy for 700 days then it expires? That part is not super clear to me.

No, Kontakt is not a subscription, although NI is on the cusp of introducing more subscriptions for Komplete (as I understand it) - so according to NI on their own forums that will be an additional option alongside perpetual licenses. (For info: they released a survey where they asked whether you would pay a subscription to “always have the latest tools.” So you can kinda see where they’re going with that.)

In terms of the upgrades, it is somewhat like a DAW like Ableton where you pay for your original version and then you will be offered an upgrade price when a new version comes out which isn’t the full price. As an example; Kontakt is currently priced at £269. But it will be on sale in summer for £134.50. And then the upgrade (from a previous version) is £89, but this will also drop during sales season. So if you move at the right time it can be reasonably cost effective. So 2 versions of Kontakt standalone should cost maybe £185. As for how long that lasts, it’s really down to luck as to when you buy into it…

On timescales, at some point there will be a Kontakt 8, which you’ll be able to upgrade to either on its own or via a Komplete bundle. Kontakt 7 was released in 2022, K6 in 2018, K5 in 2012 and K4 in 2009. So you can see there’s quite a variety of timescales there K7 is already on version 7.8, so I get the feeling that Kontakt 8 will be around in the next year or two. That said, NI tend to support one version back for a reasonable time as many musicians they serve are professionals who will be running K6.

What a lot of people do also is buy Komplete, which is both cool and infuriating, since you get a mish mash of instruments, libraries, FX - some of which are old and some are newer, some of which are great and others less so. Then I get the feeling a lot of people just pick the things they want to upgrade.

NI isn’t perfect for sure, and it comes with some issues no doubt. But if it’s simply loading some sampled instrument libraries (that isn’t a sub and that you can sell) it’s worth at least exploring, even if you don’t go up to a paid option with them.

lopodyr · 2024-02-16T16:55:04.534Z

Thanks for the very clear breakdown. That sounds interesting, granted the perpetual licence option remains a thing. It is both expensive and not so expensive considering the other options (apart from… you know, the free stuff )

I will look into it then. I don’t think I would be interested in Komplete, but Kontakt on its own could be my thing…

holonology · 2024-02-16T19:43:09.809Z

For sure. A common wish is that NI sold a bundle that was more than Kontakt but less than Komplete. I would be on board with that for sure but they price Komplete in such a way that even if you ignore the synths, it still feels like a resonable deal. I would probably prefer to be Kontakt only though in truth, and that might be my personal upgrade choice in the future.