Converting kontakt samples to renoise instruments

Not all Kontakt samples are programmed the same which can be frustrating,
I have a duduk instrument and rendering to sample lowers the volume
and sometimes the audio just stops, I don’t know what’s going on, nor do I really want to sit here
and try to figure out what’s wrong… its broken at this point of the workflow
and I need to keep going, so onto alternatives which is converting ncw kontakt files to wav to xrni.

ncw to wav
1 create a folder where ncw files are to be converted to wav
2 in kontakt vst, go to file (top right) and save as
3 select “patch + samples” and deactivate “compress samples”

link to detailed article on conversion: https://www.strezov-sampling.com…

Converting wav to xrni becomes tedious for me, so maybe someone
out there has a tip or two on workflows given how a manufacturer
names their samples can be a monkey wrench in the gears.

1 reorganize wav into subfolders
2 time consuming point in workflow, taking layered samples for example
…and changing the base note and note range of each sample,
…alot of double-click, copy, double-click, paste

EDIT/UPDATE (05/11/2015): To anyone with the same issue with the duduk kontakt instrument by ilyaefimov (1.1),
just move the “dynamic” slider, I moved it to max/100, off the shelf its typically at 50.

That seemed to solve the issue when rendering to sample/disk volume drop.
I rendered a couple more times to see if the volume dropped, and things seem to be stable
for some reason after moving the “dynamic” slider.

EDIT/UPDATE (05/12/2015): Link to danoise’s keyswitching example…

http://forum.renoise.com/index.php/files/file/240-key-switching-tricks/

This is something I have done a ton of, basically taking the raw .wav’s that go into Drumdrops Kontakt instruments and making .xrni’s out of them. I’ve also converted some free Kontakt instruments to .xrni by finding the samples folder and mapping them manually.

You basically just have to dig in and just do it, accepting that it could take an hour or if it’s especially large several hours. Over time you pick up little things that make the flow go quicker.

I personally wouldn’t even try this Duduk instrument, because you’d lose the keyswitching and expression. There really isn’t a good way to replace these in a Renoise instrument. The closest you can come is for each articulation create a different modulation group with a volume operand and map that to a macro and then automated the macro’s to switch the articulations.

Tips for general workflow:

  • Popout the sampler and fullscreen it. Collapse the sample properties to give yourself more vertical space. The first thing you want to do is to drag all the samples from the sample window into the instrument in an order that makes logical sense to you.

  • Map the keyzones next. The easiest way to do it is to just select the sample (or samples if it’s multivelocity) and just type in the bass note and note range. Dragging and dropping with the mouse is a nightmare when you have a ton of samples to work with. Note that after setting the bass note and note range you can use the mouse wheel to scroll to the next sample (but that’s not helpful if your instrument has velocity layers)

  • Now set the velocity layers. There’s a few parts to this.

  1. Plugin grab any plugin at all, it doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is you set the velocity layers to the amount of layers the instrument you’re building has. The object is to let Renoise do the math for you. Screenshot the velocity ranges it comes up with like so (I have a whole folder dedicated to this so I don’t have to re-grab every time):

mgBd3eH.png

  1. Now for all samples that are going to share the same velocity layer, ctrl-click to select them all and manually type in their velocity range. Again, using the mouse for this is not an even remotely reasonable option if you have a ton of samples.

After that you’re pretty much done. For drums I also create modulation groups with volume operands and set macros to them for easy volume setting of the different parts of the kit (kick, snare). I don’t use effects chains for this because then I’d have to put all the notes into one track.

There’s just cleanup at this point. Setting envelopes if you want envelopes, setting one-shot if it’s drums, setting the NNA, creating mute groups if you have hi hats, etc.

One thing. If you have to set loop points and you have a metric ton of samples to set? There’s no easy way to do it. Just give up and use the Kontakt instrument or something. Holy god I don’t even want to think about having to set loop points for 100+ samples.

Hey Carbonthief, thanks for taking the time to reply.
I had a feeling it was going to be a dig your feet in conversion,
I appreciate your experience in the matter (Kontakt to xrni) since I haven’t done xrni’s in a while,
I figured somehow there must be an automated way not including the plugin grabber,
alas I am at the mercy of grunt work.
The duduk instrument is about 1,000 plus samples divided in 21 subfolders. And that’s for a limited range wind instrument.

I might have to go back and deal with the instrument bug.

About losing keyswitching and expression, luckily they sampled each expression,
which saves alot of time having to do modulation sets but in the back of my mind,
there’s always the thought of what I’m missing out in regards of
Kontakt scripting vs those same samples in an xrni.

I guess that decision depends on the context or genre or amount of realism needed for the job.

I personally wouldn’t even try this Duduk instrument, because you’d lose the keyswitching and expression. There really isn’t a good way to replace these in a Renoise instrument. The closest you can come is for each articulation create a different modulation group with a volume operand and map that to a macro and then automated the macro’s to switch the articulations.

For keyswitching, you could also place a dummy sample in the instrument and have a keytracking device to operate on it. Same principle as using a macro, except that you get to control it directly from the keyboard.

I’ll prepare a small example of what I mean :slight_smile:

One thing. If you have to set loop points and you have a metric ton of samples to set? There’s no easy way to do it. Just give up and use the Kontakt instrument or something. Holy god I don’t even want to think about having to set loop points for 100+ samples.

Hm, Renoise should be able to import existing loop markers just fine - at least with .wav samples. Perhaps Kontakt simply doesn’t export them?

Also, I think a fair bit of people doesn’t know about this nice little trick when dragging samples onto the keyzone:

keyzone-assignment.gif?raw=1

With multiple samples, you can drag along the vertical axis to decide the spacing

Yeah I definitely didn’t know about that. However looks like it’s only useful if all your samples are octave spaced and have no velocity layers. I guess you could still use it for velocity layers if you dragged in one layer at a time, but then your samples will ordered by velocity instead of note on the left.