8DIO has released a free virtual instrument for Kontakt, Glass Marimba:
Glass Marimba is 8Dio’s final and freebie release of 2011. This gorgeous deep-sampled instrument contains over 2000 samples and is our way of thanking you all for a crazy year. The glass marimba has been a frequently requested instrument, so we thought it would be a great way to end the season.
The library consists of soft mallet, hard mallet, muted and finger samples. In addition we created a variety of FX and ambient patches – all made with the Glass Marimba.
It’s a free download through 1/1/2012. Full version of Kontakt 4.2+ required.
The instruments are nice. Expressive.
It’s always odd to me when samples are at low levels. E.g., many of the “nail” samples are at -30 dB.
I prefer to normalize samples and use the sample player’s velocity/amp controls to recreate the dynamics.
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s a cool set. Well worth the download.
Beautiful. A pity it requires the full version of Kontakt, and not just the free Kontakt player.
For what it’s worth, the samples are not locked into Kontakt proprietary files, so you could (if you wanted) use them in another program. However, it would be a major project.
I wonder why they did that. Perhaps there’s some features that wouldn’t fly in the player.
Good point. It made me think I could load the wav’s into Maschine, expecting to be missing the instruments. Then checked the 8DIO website more closely. In the FAQ it says:
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“Kontakt says my instrument is in demo mode. I have the free Kontakt Player.”
None of our instruments truly support the free Native Instruments Kontakt Player.
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Downloaded the 1gb file anyway and found out it works in the stand-alone free player.
And thus works also in Kontakt VST in Maschine. Nice.
Enjoy.
I was wrong. A Demo limited usage time applies in the free player, although exact time limit is unclear so far and you can reload and play instrument again after a restart.
Still worthwhile playing these beautiful instruments this way.