Ability Instruments release Freetakt, a free alternative to Native Instruments Kontakt.
Kontakt has been the de facto standard for in-the-box sampling for quite some time. It’s a paid instrument, but there are dozens of free Kontakt libraries you can use with the free Kontakt Player plugin.
Recent years have seen promising newcomers like Decent Sampler and LABS, but nothing has replaced Kontakt as an all-in-one sampling package.
Freetakt may not be an absolute replacement, but it looks to shake things up in a positive direction.
In short, Freetakt is a freeware sample player plugin developed by Ability Instruments. The intended goal for Freetakt was to provide usable and high-quality tools to musicians of all stripes without breaking the bank.
Freetakt certainly has all the bells and whistles of a premium sampler. There are numerous tools for sculpting sounds, robust scripting capabilities, and a selection of effects for both audio and MIDI.
Included with the instrument is Live Stage 3, a library sampled from a Nord Stage 3 digital piano. I’m not a pianist by any means, but the sound of the included library is quite nice.
The timbre of the piano itself lends itself well to a fair few genres, and you can blend between a traditional piano and a Rhodes. I am a personal fan of the Rhodes, especially when paired with the onboard tremolo.
Live Stage 3 can also blend into a transistor organ sound, or you can use it solely as an electric organ. The quality of the organ’s sound is likewise quite nice and packed with a very soulful character that was not aided by my clumsy fingers.
Freetakt is certainly worth a download just based on this.
Judging by this early version, Freetakt could have a promising future ahead of it, provided developers and sound designers alike latch on board. Scripting tools are available within Freetakt, which are great for creating more robust instruments.
The included effects in the sampler are likewise of decent quality. You likely will use your own processors most of the time, but the onboard tremolo, plate reverb, and delay are all quality effects.
Freetakt is, unfortunately, available solely for Windows machines at this time. Your host needs to have VST2 support or the means of wrapping VST2 plugins for use in your productions.
The biggest question is whether third-party sample makers will provide enough sample content for Freetakt to rival Kontakt. What do you think?
Download: Freetakt
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28 Comments
Tomislav Zlatic
onA big THANK YOU to BPB reader Numanoid for the info about Freetakt!
Numanoid
onThanks, but I became a bit wary of this plugin, for several reasons:
-When installing it doesn’t ask for location, and it needs to download additional Microsoft plugins, so one have to be online when installing it.
-When loading it up in my DAW (FL Studio), two instances of the same plugin show up in the plugin list.
-This is the first of several thousand VSTs I have installed over the years that tells me on start up in FL Studio that it can’t find an audio device
Sandy
onIs the VST really safe? I spooked because the installer does extracted many component/dll in the VST folder.
Numanoid
onI installed this product, because I like to check out new plugins. This one unfortunately failed to impress me at this stage it is in now.
Anybody who wants ready sounds fast it is much better to go for the free Kontakt Player and free Komplete Start pack
Ability Instruments
onYes, it is necessary to install .NET Core Framework because Freetakt is developed in C# unlike conventional plugins that are developed in C++. We didn’t include this dependency with the installer to avoid making it too large. Since .NET Core Framework is a Microsoft framework, we don’t think there should be any concern about it. Kontakt also installs various Microsoft components without your knowledge.
We apologize for the negative experience you had with FL Studio. We have removed FL Studio from the compatibility list as we have only tested Freetakt with Cubase, Reaper, Studio One, Cakewalk, and Ableton Live so far.
Additionally, we want to thank you for testing Freetakt. Although Freetakt has gained a lot of attention very quickly, we are still in the early stages of development. We are constantly learning and improving the tool on a weekly basis, and our only goal is to provide another alternative for those who cannot or do not want to buy expensive software licenses.
We hope that you will give us another chance in future versions with FL Studio Compatibility, and we appreciate your feedback as it helps us to improve Freetakt for everyone. Thank you again for trying out Freetakt, and we look forward to providing you with a better experience in the future!
ed
onsounds cool but the AI avatars and generated speech of the video killed it for me.
Martin
onAs a hypothesis: this instrument seems to be developed in Brazil. Its developer may not master enough spoken English to present the instrument himself (I would be in the same situation if I had any programming skills…). If so, a presentation in Portuguese with subtitles would be preferable in my opinion (as it is the case for other videos on his Youtube channel).
Ability Instruments
onWe’re amazed by the global interest in our project! We didn’t expect to reach so many countries at this point, but we’re thrilled to see that people from all over the world are curious about what we’re doing.
As you said, we started with a simple video in Portuguese to introduce our ideas and didn’t put much effort into marketing or video production, as we didn’t have that ambition in the beginning.
We’re particularly thrilled to see that many musicians and producers are excited about our vision for a free, open-source sampler that follows the model and concept of Kontakt.
We’re constantly working on improving its features, stability, and user-friendliness, and we’re confident that in no time, it will be a 100% functional and versatile tool for your projects.
Mike
onA real “free alternative to Native Instruments Kontakt” would be a sampler that can actually load those very “dozens of free Kontakt libraries you CAN’T use with the free Kontakt Player plugin”.
Otherwise, I’ll save my plugin list clean from yet another earthshaking alternative and keep watching how the Decent Sampler evolves.
Keith Hutchinson
onLogic Pro is listed but there is AU version. I did download just to be sure, it was vst only. Thx anyway. Cheers.
p1an0_guy
onAny way I can either get my hands on the samples or use a wrapper to use this on MacOS?
Jeremiah Lyles
onWhat folder does this install into? I’m not seeing it anywhere in Studio One.
Bani
onError when clicking the download button: Server Error in ‘/’ Application
But it sounds great. Will try again later.
Bani
onThe download finally worked
The instrument uses an unbelievable amount of CPU (like… 5x keyscape) to the point where its impossible to use it live. But it does sound great.
Ability Instruments
onThank you for your feedback. However, we would like to gently point out that Freetakt is actually extremely lightweight and consumes very little CPU. We would like to understand why you experienced such high CPU usage with Freetakt. If you could share information about your computer configuration, Windows version, and which DAW you are using, it would be valuable for us to investigate this further. Please feel free to email us at [email protected] with any additional information you can provide. Thank you for helping us improve Freetakt.
Harry
onI don’t think this has the potential to become a Kontakt alternative. There was the HISE project before, which wanted to achieve this and failed as far as I can tell.
Right now Decent Sampler is the most likely candidate to become a decent alternative or addition to Kontakt, since it’s being actively developed and already adopted by many for smaller sample library projects (see Pianobook).
It has a graphical editor, is lightweight and easy to use in general. And it’s free to use.
Thomas M
onWindows only and VST2 only – that alone already makes it useless. For example, current Cubase does not support VST2 any more.
Then, WHY do you have to copy the ugly design of the original Kontakt and not come up with something more original?
For me -> No.
But, I admit, I already own the full Kontakt…
Thomas M
onAs you can’t edit a comment,
just after I posted this I went to their page and see also ridiculous claims as:
” just install the ASIO4ALL driver and all the audio will be processed by your CPU, with very low latency and high quality, many times better than a physical audio interface”
Yes, sure …
So if anyone wants to trust the competence of those guys, they can go ahead. I will surely not.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThe comment editing feature will be added soon, I am currently testing it.
Ability Instruments
onWe’re surprised and thrilled by the rapid growth and reach of Freetakt! We had no idea that so many people would be interested in a free sampler that follows the Kontakt model and concept, but we’re glad to see that our vision resonates with the community. This only motivates us to push further and make Freetakt a truly solid and 100% solution that meets your needs and expectations (and FREE). And this is just the beginning – we have many exciting things in store, including a feature that will allow you to convert Kontakt instruments to Freetakt. Stay tuned for updates and let us know how we can improve and evolve together!
As you said, you have a full license of Kontakt and good equipment for music production. However, not everyone has access to these resources, and that’s where our free sampler comes in. Our goal is not to replace Kontakt, but to provide a free alternative for those who cannot afford or justify the cost of proprietary software. We believe in democratizing access to music-making tools and inspiring creativity regardless of financial means. That’s why we suggest using ASIO4ALL as a workaround for those who don’t have an audio interface. Thanks for your input and understanding!
Sun Ra
onConverting kontakt nki instruments to a free plugin will be revolutionary !
Zoo
onThis is going to be a failure because there’s no opensource and this website is going to randomly become inactive at some random point in time and we’ll be looking at it on archive.org and the whole thing will be dead. Random website with bad web design and closed source is only asking to disappear soon.
just-a-loop
onI tried it in Cakewalk, it first worked but after opening the project again I coudn’t load it anymore. And got an error no audio device was connected to the DAW… I decided to uninstall it and did a virus check.. :-)
just-a-loop
onI forgot to mention it sounded quite ok. But it doesn’t work properly (yet) for me…
Ability Instruments
onThank you very much for your feedback and collaboration in providing us with detailed information about the issue you encountered. We appreciate it greatly!! We are pleased to inform you that we have found and fixed the problem you described and it is now available in the latest version of Freetakt 1.0.6.
Please let us know if the issue has been resolved with Cakewalk with the latest version of Freetakt 1.0.6. We value your feedback and want to ensure that everything is working correctly for you. Thank you for your cooperation!
Peter
onI’m using freetakt in Reaper and its working great for me! No issues so far.
Jeffery W Wright
onCubase added the plugin to the block list unsupported architecture and not a valid plugin.
Ability Instruments
onWe have just re-tested Freetakt with Cubase Pro 12 and noticed that some of the DLLs included with Freetakt are being flagged as unsupported architecture and not valid VST plugins. These DLLs are only dependencies that Freetakt requires, such as Microsoft components, and are added to the block list so that they are not scanned in subsequent Cubase executions.
However, the main Freetakt DLL loads normally, and Freetakt is available as a VST instrument on the right-hand side of Cubase.
We have also released version 1.0.7 of Freetakt, which includes a fix for the “Audio Device not connected in DAW” message only in Cubase.
We kindly ask that you download the latest version of Freetakt from our website to ensure the best experience with Cubase Pro 12. Thank you for your understanding.