The 25 best free KONTAKT instruments in 2023

[kitekrazy]

https://blog.native-instruments.com/best-free-kontakt-instruments/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=Blog content en B | producers | 29/01/23&utm_id=50548665-a04b-4b1d-8cee-f2555873dbdb

Knock yourself out downloading. 

I wonder how many of these require proprietary installers.

[InstrEd]

Hey football games are on today. Don't distract  me.I have to watch two games I could care less about 😏

[David A Ludwig]

Roger that!

[Zolton]

2 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

I wonder how many of these require proprietary installers.

Having dabbled with nearly all of these at some point, it's not terribly many, depending on how you count.

Heavyocity definitely uses its own installer/portal, as does 8Dio. Impact Soundworks uses Pulse downloader, so that's more or less of an issue, depending on whether you have it installed for other purposes.

The Strezov freebies are/were directly downloadable, but you do have to register those in Native Access, so it's an extra step. Ditto for the Heavyocity Foundations Piano, so that's a double-dip of extra finagling (though lovely once set up, by most accounts).

(Not for nothing, but if you're already knee-deep in Native Access fiddling, both Strezov and Heavyocity have other very nice if sometimes niche freebies available. It's a lot easier to grab a few and configure them assembly-line style, rather than all at once, if you're interested in more than one.)

When I grabbed it a while back, XPERIMENTA Preparato Piano was a simple download, but they've moved to Pulse for their newer Minima 2 freebie, so there's a possibility that's been Pulse'd as well.

So far as I know, Karanyi, Rhythmic Robot, Pianobook, Pettinhouse, Samplephonics and the others on the list all support direct downloads -- though for most, they'll ask for an email address and/or an account setup.

[Starship Krupa]

Looks like most of them are in the RFK category.

[abacab]

49 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Looks like most of them are in the RFK category.

That's typical for most of the free Kontakt libraries to require full Kontakt. Even then, the varied install procedures from the various publishers can make them time consing just to download & check out.

Probably better to stick with Decent Sampler libraries if you are looking to explore some free ones. Pianobook carried Decent format.

[PavlovsCat]

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Looks like most of them are in the RFK category.

The list was compiled by an NI employee, so, of course, they're aiming at KONTAKT customers first. The majority of freebies on the list are years old -- the second library on the list is a dead link. It misses a bunch of really good libraries and includes some that I would consider not in the same ballpark of what they missed  (e.g., the Lobby Piano from Pianobook is okay, but it's not even close to being in the realm of the better piano libraries there; in contrast to what else is there, it's an odd choice). The freebies on the NI list that are compatible with the KONTAKT Player are all on my curated freebie list / thread, plus I have a lot more freebies with other , non-NI, players. 

Edited January 30, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[kitekrazy]

SYNTH-1 Mini Collection seems to have a broken link.

Anyone try all 25 instruments yet? 

[Zolton]

4 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

SYNTH-1 Mini Collection seems to have a broken link.

Yeah, that one oddly seems lost to time, at least officially.

From what I gather (from, e.g., BPB), it was a set of 7 Kontakt 5 presets and associated samples originally released in early 2018. At that time, Karanyi Sounds was Karanyi Music, with a different domain name to match, which is now defunct and not so obviously Wayback-able, so the links from contemporary posts are fubar'ed.

The SYNTH-1 item in the NI "Best of 2023" post cribs the description verbatim from an earlier NI blog post "5 free 80s-inspired synth libraries for KONTAKT", from May of last year. It's possible that the direct mega.nz link was active when that original post was written, but went stale in the interim and the (same) guy who went back and copied his old text for a new blog item didn't bother to check it. Pretty sloppy and/or lazy -- unless the link did work for a while recently and Karanyi noticed and decided they didn't want to serve the files any longer. 

For what it's worth, it seems the SYNTH-1 material was a precursor/inspiration for Karanyi's Synths DX product. The SYNTH-1 patches, released in February 2018, came from the OB-6, Roland Super JV, Oberheim Matrix 6 and Matrix 1000, Yamaha DX7 and Moog Minitaur. And the Synths DX description says (emphasis mine):

Quote

This boutique library contains 9 analog and pcm synth gears such as DAVE SMITH OB6, MOOG MINITAUR, MOOG SUB 37, NOVATION X STATION, NORD LEAD 2, OBERHEIM MATRIX 6, OBERHEIM MATRIX 1000, ROLAND SUPER JV & YAMAHA DX7. We recorded and designed these synths in Budapest and Los Angeles during the summer of 2018.

So maybe they improved their techniques on the same equipment and didn't want the first-try stuff lying around. Unfortunately, DX is still for Kontakt full only, the samples are encoded rather than SYNTH-1's raw WAVs and it ain't free -- though it was on sale for three bucks in December.