The soundsmiths at Native Instruments today announced Kontakt, billed as “the most powerful sampler ever created.” The sampler incorporates a variety of features and includes more than 3GB of sounds in various styles and categories.
Kontakt sports real-time time stretching and resynthesis, graphical breakpoint envelopes, an integrated loop editor, analog-modeled filters, visual displayed modulation and many other advanced features. It can manage up to 256 stereo voices per instance and sports one-click addition for effects, filters and modulation.
Native Instruments noted that Kontakt’s integrated granular resynthesis engine doesn’t require users to link pitch to length. It sports three different modes: “classic,” “Time Machine,” which enables you to manipulate length, pitch and format in real-time, and “Tone Machine” mode, which imprints a playable pitch onto the sample and maintains the same length across the keyboard.
The filter section sports 14 varieties of filters from analog lowpass and highpass to exotic sound-design filters, according to Native Instruments. A number of insert and send effects are also available to position the instruments in the mix, like EQs, waveshapers, delays and reverbs.
Kontakt’s 3GB sound library includes acoustic pianos, drums and percussion, basses and guitars, vintage instruments and more. The collection was produced by Yellow Tools and Native Instruments. Five sample CDs are included. The software can also import Akai CDs and other common formats.
Kontakt can be used as a plug-in with VST 2.0, DXi, DirectConnect and MAS. It also supports ASIO, DirectSound, MME, SoundManager, FreeMIDI and OMS. Mac system requirements call for a G3/300MHz or faster; 128MB RAM; and Mac OS 8.6 or higher.
Look for Kontakt to be released in April 2002. The PC version is expected to debut first with the Mac version to follow within a few weeks. The software carries a recommended retail price of US$399.