The Ideas Collection

[dahnielson]

the default NKI format is just a zipped XML (with a few bytes binary header).
Only kompakt/kontakt based sample libraries (sample library + bundled sampler) are encrypted.

Cool. I didn't know that. Thought that all the Kontakt stuff was the same.

[sbenno]

If I find my old C code which extracts the XML from the NKI I will post it, food of thought for you guys

BTW: I am not familiar with EXS24 but it does not seem to offer that much features. OTOH many samples do seem available in that format,
perhaps we should try to write a converter for that format ?
Does ESX24 have features which GIG does not provide ?

[dynamitec]

Hi sbenno,
I would be very intersted in the C code to extract the XML. Because I would love to read or write the NKI format. Have you found it?
Are there any informations about the NKI header?

Best,

Benjamin

[s0und]

http://unavowed.vexillium.org/pub/projects/unnks/

worked with my good old EWQLSO Platinum which cost me a ton back in the day. i always hated the NI engine and this fine app finally solved all my problems... i am still looking for a step-by-step tutorial (with pictures) how to make linuxsampler work on my macbook, then i can use my date giga libraries as well. NKI support for linuxsampler and i never have to use kontakt which is a buggy hell again...

please someone outline how to make LS work on OSX :/

great would be if 1) LS can load NKI + GIGA (the 2 biggest avail sample libraries formats) + 2) implement UNNKS ))))

[cuse]

i am still looking for a step-by-step tutorial (with pictures) how to make linuxsampler work on my macbook, then i can use my date giga libraries as well. NKI support for linuxsampler and i never have to use kontakt which is a buggy hell again...

please someone outline how to make LS work on OSX :/

great would be if 1) LS can load NKI + GIGA (the 2 biggest avail sample libraries formats) + 2) implement UNNKS ))))

Is the OS X howto not sufficient?

http://www.linuxsampler.org/osx.html

However, ATM it looks more like we are going to add support for SFZ2 after the upcoming release, instead of Kontakt (not absolutely sure yet). However I've recently discussed this with Mike Peaslee from Tonehammer and he said most things can directly be converted from Kontakt to SFZ(2) format already. ATM it seems to me as if SFZ2 could become a standard among sample library vendors.

[s0und]

if you want to read a really big audience, you should really consider implementing nki and exs support.

GIG / EXS / NKI are the biggest formats and the only reason i havent bothered using linux + linuxsampler in my studio is the fact that i couldnt care less about soundfont or any other formats or the time it takes to convert. all commercial libraries are distributed in nki or a encrypted version of it. youve talked to tonehammer? they use nki. there is 0 (ZERO) low memory footprint sampler/sample players available today, only a fat and buggy kontakt 3.5 which only extends the code but doesnt fix it /end of rant. seriously, you wanna make linuxsampler the standard include nki support. everyone nowadays will instantly setup a linux box running linuxsampler standalone. my 2 cents. please consider it. im only wainting for this implementation. and i can setup 4 linux sampler boxes right away.

[cuse]

Personally I'm not so interested anymore what the current "standard" format is. Implementing a sampler engine takes quite a time. And reverse engineering and implementing a proprietary format is a lot more time consuming than implementing an open format where specifications are available. When we start to work on a 2nd sampler engine now, we should consider what is going to be the popular format in one or two years instead. And as far as I can see this, this could be SFZ2, not nki. I talked to tonehammer yes, and yes they said they use nki, but also said that they're trying to switch to another format, like almost any sampler library vendor tries to do these days. They said they played around with some SFZ(2) capable sampler which supports the format already quite well. AFAIK Garritan already switched to a SFZ based sampler engine, Eastwest also use their own sampler engine, etc.

When we started to work on LinuxSampler (really actively), Gigasampler was the "standard" format at that point. Even though other even more powerful and more open formats were already been available, we decided our first sampler engine to be based on the Gigasampler format. One or two years later people already started to critizize that the Gigasampler format became already less popular and that we should support this and this format instead.

And I really dont want to deal with all those hacks, bugs and warts again of another over-commercially extended sampler like GSt and Kontakt. Because as you already noted, both parties just extended their feature list for promotion purposes instead of cleaning and making things stable. For us this means e.g. even though a lot of audible results in those samplers were caused by bugs, hacks or whatever, ... people expect sample libraries to sound EXACTLY the same with our sampler than with those samplers and we would have to "emulate" all these behaviors in the very detail (like we already did for GSt format). And what happens when NI decides to discontinue Kontakt? The format will be dead from one day to the other and no sample library vendor will develop any more nki libraries.