Do i really need Kontakt?

Hi there,

Im new here, and just started to learn Cubase days ago. Im on Cubase 12 for Mac. My question is:

Do i really need to install Kontakt? since Cubase has its own build-in ‘Halton Sonic SE3’ already.

Thanks for any help.

Well, that is something only you can decide, isn’t it? If there are third party sample libraries you want to have that only exist in Kontakt format, you will need Kontakt. If you are quite happy with what Halion One SE offers you, there is no need for Kontakt. Really depends on your needs…

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Not really. There are also lots of other 3rd party vsti. I don’t use Kontakt.

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As Fese said, only you know.

Kontakt and the free Kontakt Player is by de facto the industry Sample player, especially in orchestral, video games, movie trailers etc. It doesn’t get updated very often, and some users dislike the GUI. But these days, I think this is NI’s bread and butter especially since they are now with Soundwide.

If you are mostly using synth sounds and patches, I can’t think of any reason to use Kontakt. But if you need an orchestra, guitars, horns brass, woodwinds anything acoustic…you most likely will eventually need Kontakt, as well as large and fast SSD drives.

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Kontakt is the most widely known VST sampler on the market, and shows up as the core application driving many, many instruments and packages. Halion, not so much. You could ignore Kontakt, but I can nearly guarantee you will wind up installing it at some point. Why not just install it? Its small and you dont have to install all it libraries if you dont want to.

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I absolutely hate it’s interface and uninstalled it. Spitfire is good for orchestral, sd3 is the best for drums etc.

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I have ignored it and have no plans to install it at any point.

Because I don’t need it.

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I wasnt replying to you, or anyone with experience using Kontakt. I was talking to the OP, who will find out the truth of what I said over time anyway.

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I know.

This is somewhat confusing. So, you don’t want any input from Kontakt users? You just want to force it on people with no explanation why it is “needed”? I don’t understand.

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I was literally talking to the person who started this thread.

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Just play around with HALion Sonic 3 SE for some time. I don’t know if you are new to music production in general or changed from another DAW to Cubase. If you are completely new, just use HSSE and other stock instruments/effects for a bit, recording and make some grooves; which IMO is more important because you learn to use Steinberg’s instruments first. This works great as those are inherently integrated with Cubase very well, making you learn Cubase better in the long run.

You will eventually try out 3rd party instruments sooner or later anyway, so you will automatically come across Kontakt and their libraries sooner or later. The important difference is between “Kontakt” and “Kontakt Player” (the latter being the free version). The paid version is just called “Kontakt”. Some libraries which need to full version and will clearly will state “FULL Kontakt required” or something similar in the description. But don’t worry for now. Some people, like in YouTube videos, might tell you that you always need full Kontakt, which imho should be ignored. But frankly, you will find out that on your musical journey on your own soon.

Otherwise there is no risk at all simply loading Kontakt Player. You can grab it for free as said, and it comes with a factory content selection from the paid version. Which is more than enough to get started with the basics. The sampler is not too intrusive (and obviously should be at all, installed on a music computer).

Might be worth a shot for toying around how to load instruments - which is really easy in most cases.

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