Besides being a VI host, Kontakt is also a sampler and has a great deal of additional functionality. Kontakt Player is only a host for compatible libraries.

At first, it's counterintuitive as in the Mercury example but makes sense when you know that 3rd party developers must pay a license to NI for a library to be compatible with the free Kontakt Player. I have some other libraries where the $29 or freebie requires Kontakt but the $99 works in Player.

NI offers teaser libraries that work in Kontakt Player. Their expensive libraries come either with Kontakt/Komplete or as an add-on but they also work with the free Kontakt Player—you don't get the sampling and other functionality if you use the Player.


UVI offers something similar but they give the sampler/synth a different name: Falcon. UVI Player is free. They and 3rd party developers let you know if VIs work in UVI or if Falcon is required. Two different names ends a lot of confusion.


I like the way IK does it. SampleTank is a very powerful player. It can be downloaded as CS for free. All paid versions use the same free player. I didn't realise this last year when my SampleTank3 libraries were giving me grief over MacOS Mojave and now I'm looking at a pricy upgrades. So I downloaded SampleTank4 CS for free to evaluate. Oh wait… now all my ST3, Miroslav, TotalStudio libraries open up in ST4 with more functionality than before and nothing is asking for new licenses — just like UVI, the actual player is free. Got it!

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