Best library for dragging and dropping your own samples?

It's not drag'n'drop within the interface, but the Photosynthesis Engine provides a great starting point to drag zones in: https://www.exoticstates.com/photosynthesis/engine

And there's of course Straylight (which got sample import in an update) and Pharlight.

Iris 2

If I might add a question: is there a Kontakt lib (or other vst) that works as easy as the logic quick sampler?

Omnisphere? Every time I see one of those, I realize I can do that in Omnisphere, so they aren't worth buying for me.

Ruffian Price said:

It's not drag'n'drop within the interface, but the Photosynthesis Engine provides a great starting point to drag zones in: https://www.exoticstates.com/photosynthesis/engine

And there's of course Straylight (which got sample import in an update) and Pharlight.

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2nd that. Photosynthesis is awesome and it couldn't any easier to build your own instruments. I must have at least 100 if not more custom VIs I've made using it... It's first call when I'm building custom instruments. Straylight's ok, but you only get one drag-drop oscillator. (Great as an instrument however. Really excellent atmospheres for tension and hybrid-ish stuff.)

Although I don't know enough from a developer's perspective, considering everything I've seen so far - Drag and drop in Kontakt works quite the way you'd hope it to, it's quite limited. It doesn't look like you'll be dragging and dropping one shot sound menus to it anytime soon.... (I could be wrong but I haven't seen anything that lets you do this...)

Basically samples will be treated as an oscillator and stretched across the keyboard... (At least based on what I own and what I've seen so far....) As far as editing zones after - that comes down to the script. Some play fine with modifications some don't...

Ethera Gold 2.0 / 2.5 has the Audio Import Feature

FlyingAndi said:

If I might add a question: is there a Kontakt lib (or other vst) that works as easy as the logic quick sampler?

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If you mean by auto-slicing and mapping to the keybaord nope. At least not in terms of it being a one click operation.... Quick Sampler and Live Simpler are the quickest that I've used for automated slicing.

I wish Spectrasonics would get their act together and update Stylus to version 2 and implement wave import with automated slicing. Stylus is great, but it's almost a decade behind the curve compared to a ton of other, (less expensive) options out there.

Ruffian Price said:

It's not drag'n'drop within the interface, but the Photosynthesis Engine provides a great starting point to drag zones in: https://www.exoticstates.com/photosynthesis/engine

And there's of course Straylight (which got sample import in an update) and Pharlight.

Click to expand...

I forgot about Straylight and Pharlight's sample import ability...
After some thought, what's most intriguing to me is Aura by Vir2 Instruments which was just released. I like it because of the ease of importing samples into four layers and the instant X/Y control. Pretty cool:

I love throwing stuff into The Mangle. Hands down the best and most intuitive granular synth, more so than Straylight and others imo. Only caveat is that it no longer seems to be supported, but the last version has been pretty stable for me on 10.14.

Fracture Sounds Granulate I guess?

I always take a look at these tools and wonder why nobody gives us a simple pitch envelope that's fast and easy to use. From designing risers and downers, to milking some expression from a percussive sample, it's something I always want to see but never do. So I look elsewhere...

Soniccouture Haunted Spaces

Cycles all the way!

That's cool, I spent the last week looking around the forum for this exact discussion. I didn't find much, but I did find this thread:

VIControl - Free sound design tools

I'd also like to note that Cubase's Padshop 2 naturally allows this.

Wake said:

I always take a look at these tools and wonder why nobody gives us a simple pitch envelope that's fast and easy to use. From designing risers and downers, to milking some expression from a percussive sample, it's something I always want to see but never do. So I look elsewhere...

Click to expand...

I think you can do that with the full version of Kontakt and once you set it up once it's probably fairly easy to switch out the sample.

I guess it's about comfort and a cleverly laid out palette of manipulation methods for me. Menu diving in kontakt is a strain on the eyes and patience as well.

I keep wishing for something like PS Pandora but with user sample support. Boom - it's done, it's synced, move on to the next task.

I was just reminded of Native Instrument's Absynth and Form

Edit: And Skanner XT

I have been looking at a LOT of these VIs that allow you to blend/modulate/filter/etc 2-4 sounds.

Some sound great (Bioscape), some are not impressive at all (Metawave).
Some of these have excellent sequencers, but don't allow user samples (e.g., Lunaris, Elysion).
Some allow user samples, and make excellent 'drones', but don't include any sequencer for movement.

Looks to me like the 3 best I have seen so far, in order of increasing price, are Photosynthesis, Aura, and Omnisphere. Omnisphere is probably the most powerful, especially with the new sequencer capabilities(!), but also has a pretty high learning curve.

I personally think Bioscape really is up there among the truly good ones.