March 29, 2010


Kontakt was envisioned as a 'new-breed' software sampler, the original version pushing for a stable interface to work with pitched musical sound. Some say that Kontakt's main focus was interface design, enabling musicians to quickly and painlessly create their own instruments based on sampling sound sources.
Kontakt 2, released in 2005, extends on many features of Kontakt, and also includes a number of new sound-treatment algorithms, that enable one to stretch or tune a sound without altering pitch or time, respectively. One of the landmark features of Kontakt, however, remains the ability to control multiple voices via different MIDI channels, which reduces the memory and CPU load of having multiple instances of software allocated for multiple voices.
Kontakt 2 also features a full-fledged scripting language called KSP (syntax similar to Pascal) that enables users to build their own "MIDI Logic" plugins, using bits and pieces of Kontakt's GUI to create their user interfaces. Some of the community felt the need to express that the confusing nature of scripting would not appeal to the "non-tech-heads" while most of the Native Instruments community have expressed gratitude for further modification tools. Most KSP scripts are Open Source and keep nothing hidden from any user (their own, or factory provided) which provides a practical point of reference to facilitate learning. However, should one choose to hide their code, a password can be set to control access to the script's source code.

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