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HISE as Alternative to Kontakt (Split from NI-Partnership Thread)

I confirm for the FLAC streaming ;)
24bits is honestly useless as you usually normalize your samples when used in a sampler context
You should of course record in 24bits but for actual data storage it is mostly useless especially as you can keep the original volume layout using volume settings and not in sample itself.
 
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This is not about dynamic range but transient fidelity, which will be better on 24-bit regardless of dynamic range.
 
This is not about dynamic range but transient fidelity, which will be better on 24-bit regardless of dynamic range.
At record time to leave headroom to avoid clipping I can understand why, I doubt this is really useful at playback especially given no DA converter SNR match 24bits. Not sure high end even match 96 dB :)
 
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I confirm for the FLAC streaming ;)
24bits is honestly useless as you usually normalize your samples when used in a sampler context
You should of course record in 24bits but for actual data storage it is mostly useless especially as you can keep the original volume layout using volume settings and not in sample itself.
That might be true from an academic or engineering standpoint, but from a marketing standpoint (after all, Realitone is a business, not an AES chapter), good luck trying to educate buyers that 16 bits is just as good as 24 bits. I still can't even get customers to understand the difference Kontakt and Kontakt Player. ;)

When it comes to selling product, it doesn't matter what the real science is, and it doesn't even matter if most people believe 16 bits is fine. As long as there's still that 10% who think they need 24 bits, then that's 10% of potential sales I left on the table.
 
Well you can tell customers they get 33% more streaming performance without sacrificing sound quality.

If I could choose between 24bit versions and (correctly normalized) 16bit versions of a library I would always pick the 16bit version because it allows me to load more samples before my system chokes.
 
I tend to not compromise my technical belief for marketing reason and try to educate users whenever I can.
Sure this is not the easiest path but I have hope for the future.
I've sent quite some time this video to some users in similar thread

UVI soundbank are recorded at 24bits / 88.2kHz but final assets are delivered as 16bits / 44.1kHz for this exact reason. Playback engine can still be oversampled internally if necessary for distortion/filtering.
Sorry for the HS.
 
Yeah, because at 44.1k you still shave off some megabytes, ehehe. Nevermind that most pros are working at 48k and that the library in that form would get resampled on the fly anyways...
 
44.1khz vs 48khz is mostly a radio music vs cinema industry rather than pro vs not pro.
It all depends which crowd your soundbank are aimed at.
It's best to select the SR that match your industry to avoid any realtime resampling.
Our Trailer FX soundbank is in 48khz for this matter.

End of HS and back to Hise which looks very good especially for an open source project. Congrats !
 
@chrisboy I don't have much to add to this discussion, but I wanted to quickly hop in to thank you for making HISE. I've only worked with it a little bit, but I'm frankly amazed that you've made this software on your own. I've already constructed a few personal libs (really dumb percussive stuff, no scripting) with it and I plan to soon show it to some other audio folks I know ;)

And thanks again Mr. Healey for pointing me toward HISE in the first place!

Carry on :)
 
Also, downsampling from 88.2 kHz to 44.1 kHz minimizes the risks of aliasing, since you're dividing it in half.
From 88.2 kHz to 48 kHz the conversion could suffer. Is it audible though? Probably not.
 
Well you can tell customers they get 33% more streaming performance without sacrificing sound quality.
Sure, except that's a conversation that would never happen. Customers aren't going to email and ask, "Golly, I see that you guys' samples are 16 bit. Why is that?" People (outside of forums) don't like to be confrontational, so they hesitate to ask biting questions like that.

Instead, a potential customer might be trying to decide between my new (hypothetical) string library and Company X's string library. He asks his friend for his opinion. The friend will likely say, "Well, Company X's library is 24 bit, but Realitone's is only 16 bit." From there, they might discuss whether 16/24 bits actually matters, but if they do, there's a good chance they're conclusion will be that ... it does! If Mario in this thread isn't completely convinced there's no loss at 16 bits, then we can be sure the masses won't be either. In fact, I know of one company who used to give customers the option of 16 bit and 24 bit versions, and now they only give the 24 bit option because no one wanted the 16 bit versions.

Don't get me wrong, if you don't want to offer compression for 24 bits, then don't. It's not a deal breaker per se, but I can tell you that I'm alone in that if I do decide to do a library using HISE, I would forego compressing the samples and just leave them uncompressed, so they could stay 24 bit. It's Sample Library Marketing 101. ;)
 
before we go way too into bit depth talk...

whats the appeal or interest of hise?
 
before we go way too into bit depth talk...
whats the appeal or interest of hise?
For me, there are three things that interest me:
1. Better copy protection possibilities, since I assume I can tweak the C++ code to throw in my own little twists. Kontakt is a big target, so hackers will spend some time trying to crack it. But l'il ole me with my Realitone libraries? Highly unlikely anyone would bother, so I wouldn't even need to get fancy in order to protect my libraries.

On that front, NI has been completely deaf to our (developers') suggestions for ways to improve it. We've made what I believe are very reasonable and simple requests to make it so we could insert own CP schemes, but NI doesn't even respond when the topic is brought up.

2. With Realivox Blue, because of the wordbuilder, Kontakt's lack of ability to let users input from their QWERTY keyboards is a major drawback. Mind you, I don't know whether HISE does allow QWERTY input, and perhaps Kontakt 6 (whenever they decide to release it) will allow it, but for now, this has me interested in alternative platforms.

3. I have an instrument idea that requires real-time audio input, which Kontakt can't do. Since HISE is basically anything you want to make it, I assume this will be possible.

I'm not the only developer who has toyed with the idea of creating my own sampler, and every once in a while, some of us will even discuss teaming up to do that. There's a LOT of work and risk in doing that, though, so the fact that Christof has already done most of the work and we can tweak from what he's already done, is very appealing.

With all that said, I would likely still continue with Kontakt for most of our stuff. It's a great platform with some serious advantages, plus I don't want to rewrite everything we've already done, so no way would I abandon it.
 
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Kontakt's lack of ability to let users input from their QWERTY keyboards is a major drawback.

K5 got the ui_text_input() widget, so entering text is definitely possible. However, you cannot parse what's been inputted in order to check validity of input (i.e. if the user typed "rah" or "raa" etc.) - it's mainly there for stuff like naming keys and/or NKA files. Still, it's there.
 
whats the appeal or interest of hise?
For me:
  • It's free as in speech (and beer if you're releasing a GPL licensed library).
  • Far superior scripting language(s) to Kontakt, or any other sampler.
  • A proper script editor.
  • WYSIWYG GUI Designer.
  • Modular design makes it very easy to maintain and re-use parts of one project in another
  • Built in vector graphics tools allow for scalable UIs to be designed within HISE without needing to use external images (or you can use external images, including vectors/svg)
  • UI is scalable up to 200%
  • XML Based file format makes it easy to edit presets and sample maps in a text editor.
  • Hot-swappable sample maps
  • Built in support for mult-mic samples
  • Built in support for crossfading between groups
  • Can export directly to a VSTi - no need for a separate player app
  • Sample editing tools to auto trim samples
  • Sophisticated sample import tool (is Kontakt still limited to dragging in 127 samples at a time?)
  • Floating point numbers :) (I know Kontakt has these now, after 15 years or more)

I could keep adding to the list but basically unless you are creating an instrument that requires some feature that HISE doesn't support (time stretching, beat slicing), would be more efficient in Kontakt, or doesn't fit the HISE paradigm, then HISE is probably a better choice than Kontakt or any other sampler. If you are just starting out with developing sample libraries then definitely learn HISE.
 
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