so not only pay for Xsamples, but then also have to pay for Kontakt?
This gets expensive pretty quickly.
Yes, if you only use Kontakt for Xsample. It is an essential tool for me, so I had it already. Kontakt is on sale during the usual suspect times of the year.
It might not be essential for many, but with Kontakt comes a rich array of sounds, that may be of use.
Paolo
I don’t know where the 99 euros is coming from, but when I click on that link it’s nearly $400 CDN.
which is ridiculously expensive for a library I won’t use. (their website doesn’t even bother giving samples of the different sets of sounds, instead we get some crappy mix of drums and electronica with some strings blended into the background)
The NI Kontakt ecosystem is complex.
Library creators (like Xsample) can either release their product to use the Free Kontakt Player but pay NI a commission for the privilege, or they can require users to have the Full Kontakt and not pay NI anything.
I’m sure other deals are done that result in libraries/instruments being bundled for ‘free’ with the Full Kontakt package(s), whilst also being available separately (for a fee) if you use the free Kontakt player.
As ever, decisions will depend on what you need and what you value (and yes, the full Kontakt bundles are skewed towards pop/electronic DAW instruments - but I do find the Classical sounds useful).
so I did decide to buy the InstrumentX solo strings and created a new thread to demo them in case anyone interested hasn’t already seen it.