Well, an additional little report…
ESC is really efficient : I used it for converting my main EMu X samples bank to both .sf2 and .sfz format. Worked without a glitch. Sad that this tool seems also to be abandonware but, at least, it will have helped me saving all the work I have done with EMu X in the past.
Now about using the results with both Halion 4.5 and Kontakt 5 Player, both of them read and play more or less correctly the converted bank. This said, I have to add that sadly, H4 has two major issues against K5P :
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it doesn’t accept .sfz format. I could test it only with a .sf2 bank. Sad, because I obtained the most accurate restitution of my bank with K5P using the .sfz format.
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there are glitches in H4 restitution of sounds : on several patches involving non sustained keuboard sounds, the release of the keys are not taken into account, as if the sustain pedal was always pressed while playing. This doesn’t happend with K5P, using the same .sf2 bank. Maybe there is a setting that I missed somewhere ; I don’t know…
On the other side, K5 seems more unstable : don’t know why but I got two crashes of it in standalone mode when there was a problem to find missing samples. Didn’t happen with H4.
So, the balance is rather leaning toward K5, presently, for its better compatibility with other formats, despite its cryptic UI. I would have much preferred a Halion 4 with a ‘File/Load…’ command reading accuratly …sfz as well as .sf2 samples presets/banks. I didn’t try to use other formats, yet, as I focused on the most universal ones to see what I could get, but the bank converted to .sfz one is really accuratly read in K5P and I’m positivly surprised of the result : I was not expecting something at this level.
Will try in the following days other formats, just to see if Halion 4 can cope accuratly with at least one or two of them. After, there will remain, at least, samples editing task (looping, samples mapping, velocity crossfading layers…).
Just an observation : the day I won’t be able to use EMu X3 anymore, I will feel a little abandoned. So better and more intuitive than these two :
- it has integrated sampling function with Synthswipe which allows you to do a complete sampling of a sound across the keyboard and at different velocities, all in one pass. Compared to it, H4 and K5, look just like sophisticated romplers…
- it has an much more intuitive way of managing presets and banks,
- its interface for working on samples is second to none : I have spent I don’t know how much time editing with it and always ended with good results,
- it is rock stable : I don’t remember seeing a crash from it through all these years.
Creative, I hate you for having abandoned such a gem…
Cheers,
