2_nice said:
best is gigasampler. kontakt is very good as is halion, sampletank, vsampler, the one mout make, the one that comes with cakewalk project 5, blah blah blah,
stick with kontakt it is just as good as anything out there unless you want to make very complex acoustic sounding orchestrations that must sound totally real then try to learn gigasampler but then you should use a gsif driver compatible card
i have to seriously disagree. i own kontakt, sampletank2, and halion 2.0.
these are FAR from created equal.
first, what are your major needs? what type of instruments? what sound libraries are you trying to use- emu, akai, giga, etc?
the sampletank effects section is far and away the most valuable piece of my setup. that alone is worth the cost. plus it has a more-than respectable (both in size and quality) library out of the box.
actually, i would recommend the Emu Emulator X at this point. it comes with the exact same soundset as the Proteus 2000, which is pretty good. it also comes with its own sound card, and its like, $200. emu has long been the standard for hardware samplers and this should be no exception. if i didnt already have sampletank and wasnt about to get the Fantom, i would get this mos def. dont sleep on emu.
otherwise, sampletank2 is the way to go. kontakt has crap for effects isnt the most organized program, allthough its editing features are a plus when compared with sampletank2. dont even bother with halion.
i have heard good things about giga, however. i still say emu!