Curious questions regarding STS5000 & Kontakt...

Talk about the STS series of Creamware samplers.

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Basic Pitch
Posts: 627
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 4:00 pm

Post by Basic Pitch »

Greetings all,

Well I have had my system now for a few weeks and I must be honest and say I just last night loaded the STS5000 for the first time and actually tried to work with it. I opened the .pdf along side to give me a general idea of how to load samples but this was pretty clunky feeling and I was having major issues loading .wav or .aif's to I then switched to SF2's and thgis worked flawless.

I really tried to get a grasp of what was going on with the sampler but it was fairly confusing, though some of the options seemed pretty neat, one being able to record as an input. I understand the theory behind the STS series was to compete with S series akai samplers ( I have 2 S2000's ).

So after a little while I was tweaking about and decided to load an instance of Kontakt and play a midi part of the same sample loaded into each sampler, there was no noticable difference in quality and then I started to wonder.

What exactly are the advantages of using the STS5000 over say Kontakt, if I understand correctly, all STS samples are stored in the PC memory, so if I have heavy STS usage will that not hinder my VSTi performance since ill be using memory with STS? I ask because Kontakt as DFD streaming, so this eleviates the memory usage.

I guess in a way I feel I should give the STS5000 a chance since I paid for it, but Kontakt does some pretty amazing things and just feels more natural, not to mention onboard effects and the multitude of sound mangling possibilities.

So I ask, what are the advantages/disadvanatges to using the STS5000 over say Kontakt, are there certain libraries that it can handle better than say Kontakt?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, and onbe last question, in regards to having issues with .wav files, in the file browser of SFK I would navigate to my .wav files and then drag the sample over to the STS window on sample #1 it wouldnt promtly say there was an effor and the text would vanish.

Now, if I created a new program, then edited the keynote values and dragged the sample in the key notes the sample would then be loaded, but I would have no way of editing the samples name in the main window.

Any info or ideas or general feeling about these two samplers would be greatly welcomed. I keep reading about the time stretch features and the osc's and posibities of the STS5000 and it has me interested, not sure if the same results can be had with kontakt, let me know :wink:

Thanks in advance..
scary808
Posts: 449
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Utah

Post by scary808 »

On 2004-03-30 16:50, Basic Pitch wrote:


So I ask, what are the advantages/disadvanatges to using the STS5000 over say Kontakt...





Well, the realtime pitch shift & timestretch feature is very cool. Also the array of filter options in the STS5K is very usefull. I haven't really played with Kontakt but it looks neat & intuitive. The STS program hierchy is a bit like oldschool hardware samplers so that's why I like it. It could be easier to deal with though...
Spirit
Posts: 2661
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: Terra Australis

Post by Spirit »

I found the STS range completely incomprehensible and very unfriendly. What I do like about them though is that they are *true* samplers - that is they can actually sample (unlike Kontakt).
eliam
Posts: 1093
Joined: Sat Jan 05, 2002 4:00 pm
Location: Montreal, Quebec
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Post by eliam »

I know that me and Spirit do not agree on this one, but I found the STS-3000 absolutely natural and easy to use. Everything I wanted to do was set in no time, almost every time. Of course, I'd like to see big improvements for this software. especially when you compare it to kontakt, which is much superior in terms of modulation flexibility. Still, the STS is sturdy and reliable and simple to program.
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