Hello, I am looking to upgrade my malletkat sound and am looking into laptop midi setups so that I can use proprietary samples instead of the gigkat sound modules endorsed by Alternate Mode.
Q1: What samples do you use? (Some appear to require a much heavier laptop than others)
Q2: What software midi sampler application do you use to play these samples?
Q3: What make/year laptop do you use to run the player without audio glitches?
Q4: What usb midi interface do you use to connect the malletkat to the laptop?
Problem: I am experiencing latency/sound glitch issues in my laptop setup. I have a 2017 macbook pro (16 GB) and also a 2025 macbook Air (24GB), the 2017 can barely load the samples and playback is very scratchy like it can't keep up. The 2025 was better but the playback still had glitches, and increasing buffer size from 512 samples (10ms) to 1024 samples (21ms) helped a bit but the extra latency drives me crazy and the results were still not perfect, in fact I Just tried it again and the results are quite poor. I am using DecentSampler (free). I am fine to spend some money on the right software application but it needs to work. Also, these apps sure are finnicky!
P.S., as an appendix I will dump my collection of relevant links here because this knowledge was difficult to find in 2026:
Some URLs to vibe sound samples, for others, since they are hard to find:
- Essential Vibraphone from NTONYX Sounds http://ntonyx.com/05_sf_01.html#004
- Vibsym from Acoustic Samples https://www.acousticsamples.net/vibysm
- AS Free Collection from Acoustic Samples https://www.acousticsamples.net/as-free-collection
- Soundiron - tuned percussion library https://soundiron.com/collections/tuned-percussion
- Gentle Vibes from Somerville Sounds https://somervillesounds.com/gentle-vibes/
These are all beautiful sounds
Sound sampler applications:
- Decent Sampler Plugin (Free) by Decent Samples https://www.decentsamples.com/product/decent-sampler-plugin/
- Kontact 8 player by Native Instruments https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/samplers/kontak…
Here is the USB Midi interface I use to connect the malletkat to my laptop: Roland UM-ONE Mk2 USB MIDI Interface https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00967UN50 . It has two modes, "PC mode" which needs a driver, and "tab mode" which doesn't. I only got the tab mode to work with my macbooks. (I wonder if this is part of the problem? What MIDI interface do you use?)
Here are some hardware sound modules that are plug-n-play without a laptop:
- GigKat 1, no longer available? This is what I've been using for years, it has about a dozen vibraphone sounds and the plain old "Vibraphone" sound is what I've been using for years, it sounds good on 5 octaves
- GigKat 2 and Gigkat 2 ES: https://alternatemode.com/collections/hardware-sound-sources I tried upgrading to this and while the hardware is superior to the GigKat 1, the vibraphone sounds were terrible, unusable, I returned it.
- Ketron SD1000 Midi Sound Module - apparently no longer in stock, here is the sound demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtpk8RLY1nw . I tried to purchase this but can't find it anywhere!
- V3 Sound Sonority Pro Sound Module - sweetwater sales eng found this, haven't looked into the sounds. It looks like identical hardware to the GigKat 2 but unclear about the sounds. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/V3SonorityPro--v3-sound-sonorit…