# Komplete Kontrol and my workflow !!!!



## MeloKeyz (Mar 1, 2020)

Dear VI Controllers,

I purchased kontrol s61 MK2 and I want to use it to control my DAW. Upgraded the keyboard to the latest firmware, installed kontrol software, and configured the necessary audio/midi and library settings. Now, I don't know how to add instruments and effects in KK. I want to add Metropolis Ark 1 library but it can't find it. I double checked MA1 folder path in the "Library" tab in "Preferences" and hit "Rescan", still it can't find it.

My second issue is the workflow. Now, in Cubase, I configured KK MK2 as a plugin, same as Kontakt. I guessed that I have to add KK always as an instrument track in order to control the VST instruments in all of my libraries. I can't make sure of this now because i haven't loaded any instruments in KK yet but my hunch is telling me that I will no longer add Kontakt as an instrument track. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Appreciate your response.


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## HeliaVox (Mar 1, 2020)

Is Arc NKS compatible? If it isn’t you don’t have all the nifty features that NKS compatibility brings.
You could always open it in Kontakt within Komplete Kontrol and assign controls.
And yes, you have to run an instance of Komplete Kontrol on every track in order to use the features within KK


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## gh0stwrit3r (Mar 1, 2020)

ARK is NKS ready according to the NI website. Did you add the library to the Native Access app (serial number etc).? When done, run the komplete Kontrol app. It should find and add the ARK patches.

Start your DAW, run an instance of KK and ARK should be visible now.


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## jbuhler (Mar 1, 2020)

Komplete Kontrol software is very kludgy, and sometimes it finds my NKS stuff and sometimes it does not. Currently, it is not finding Ark 3, for instance, but it is finding Arks 1 and 2—they are supported. (It's also not finding Berlin Strings, but I'm not sure if that library is supported.) Ark 2 is listed not just under Orchestral Tools but also under Native Instruments. Go figure! Then too sometimes instruments migrate to "User" for reasons I'm not clear about. It's likely something I did with saving patches, but since I never use the KK software, I'm not really sure what would have done it. But for the longest time, my Arks were located on the user side. In any case, I'm happy I didn't buy my S61 to use KK because it would be driving me batty. The only time I use KK is to make presets for the keyboard, assigning buttons, and whatnot. That part of KK, I've come to rather like, now that they allow you to fully assign things. (It took NI almost a year from the release of the mk 2, however to support user assignments on the keyboard and with the lights.)


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 1, 2020)

Did you open it up in Komplete Kontrol Standalone first? You always need to open NKS instruments in KK Standalone before they will work in your DAW. 

Of course, you can add Kontakt whenever you want. It just depends on what is best for you. 
If an instrument doesn't have NKS, it won't _necessarily _have the light guides or parameters assigned to knobs. But I have found that many non-NKS libraries do have light guides/parameters when I load them up as instruments in Kontakt within KK. 

But there are times when I want to create multis in Kontakt, or when it's just easier.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

HeliaVox said:


> Is Arc NKS compatible? If it isn’t you don’t have all the nifty features that NKS compatibility brings.
> You could always open it in Kontakt within Komplete Kontrol and assign controls.
> And yes, you have to run an instance of Komplete Kontrol on every track in order to use the features within KK



Yes, it is supposed to be an NKS compatible.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

gh0stwrit3r said:


> ARK is NKS ready according to the NI website. Did you add the library to the Native Access app (serial number etc).? When done, run the komplete Kontrol app. It should find and add the ARK patches.
> 
> Start your DAW, run an instance of KK and ARK should be visible now.



Positive.
Activated the library in Native Access with a green tick saying successfully installed. 
I don't know what I'm missing but I feel it's a lil stupid thing.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Did you open it up in Komplete Kontrol Standalone first? You always need to open NKS instruments in KK Standalone before they will work in your DAW.
> 
> Of course, you can add Kontakt whenever you want. It just depends on what is best for you.
> If an instrument doesn't have NKS, it won't _necessarily _have the light guides or parameters assigned to knobs. But I have found that many non-NKS libraries do have light guides/parameters when I load them up as instruments in Kontakt within KK.
> ...



Yes, sir I did. When I said I configured audio/midi settings in my original thread, it was in standalone mode, yes. The thing is that I did add Massive, Symphony series, Damage, and Kinetic Metal and they work as hell in KK. I started to believe that Komplete libraries are more NKS than 3rd party NKS lol.


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## Michael Antrum (Mar 2, 2020)

There was an upgrade to MA1 to make it NKS compatible. If you, like me, had Ark 1 prior to it becoming NKS compatible there is an upgrade you need to download before KK will see it....

MA1 was out for quite some time before it was made NKS compliant.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

Michael Antrum said:


> There was an upgrade to MA1 to make it NKS compatible. If you, like me, had Ark 1 prior to it becoming NKS compatible there is an upgrade you need to download before KK will see it....
> 
> MA1 was out for quite some time before it was made NKS compliant.



Copy that sir.
Good news is, I purchased my MA 1/2 last month so I am pretty sure sir that they already are NKS.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

HeliaVox said:


> Is Arc NKS compatible? If it isn’t you don’t have all the nifty features that NKS compatibility brings.
> You could always open it in Kontakt within Komplete Kontrol and assign controls.
> And yes, you have to run an instance of Komplete Kontrol on every track in order to use the features within KK



Could you please tell me what is the difference if I open my VST instruments inside KK directly vs VST instruments inside Kontakt which in turn be inside KK? ... Ya know, in technology, I have been avoiding complex nesting since my days in the IT industry lol.


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## Alex Fraser (Mar 2, 2020)

MeloKeyz said:


> Ya know, in technology, I have been avoiding complex nesting since my days in the IT industry lol.


Yep. I use KK from time to time (it's good for using eDNA Spitfire stuff) but I can't help thinking that if you were designing such a system with a blank sheet, you'd _never_ put it together in the way that NI have been forced to in order the get the hardware features working.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

Alex Fraser said:


> but I can't help thinking that if you were designing such a system with a blank sheet, you'd _never_ put it together in the way that NI have been forced to in order the get the hardware features working.



Sorry sir, I don't follow you. What do you mean? Newbie here


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## Alex Fraser (Mar 2, 2020)

MeloKeyz said:


> Sorry sir, I don't follow you. What do you mean? Newbie here


Ah, sorry. What I mean is that KK is a "wrapper" plugin and needs to be in order to communicate between the NI hardware and the various supported DAWs. It's the "nesting" thing you were referring to - if you were designing a hypothetical software/hardware integration from scratch without needing to support a huge cross platform hodge-podge of tech, you'd do it a different way.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

Alex Fraser said:


> Ah, sorry. What I mean is that KK is a "wrapper" plugin and needs to be in order to communicate between the NI hardware and the various supported DAWs. It's the "nesting" thing you were referring to - if you were designing a hypothetical software/hardware integration from scratch without needing to support a huge cross platform hodge-podge of tech, you'd do it a different way.



Exactly !!
But the most important thing is that vendors must learn from their mistakes. Some do learn from their mistakes, some don't learn and they keep providing services that lack certain integration for years. Take Microsoft as an example. They learned from their competitors how to provide us a unified GUI for managing group policies after 4 years, instead of the old scattered policies that you should organize manually.

I got used to this concept, is to wait for something and don't buy it for at least 3 years until it gets completed. For instance, I bought NI UCE and KK in 2020 and yet still not perfect lol.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

OMG, Okay ... I told ya, I felt that it was a lil stupid thing that I was missing and I am very pissed off right now. lol

I simply clicked the user icon in KK software which is the user presets and I found my MA1. Very silly !!! hehe


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 2, 2020)

Now, I am going to find out what's the benefit of nesting KK inside Kontakt to assign controls.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 2, 2020)

MeloKeyz said:


> Now, I am going to find out what's the benefit of nesting KK inside Kontakt to assign controls.


Working in KK standalone, you can set up your own templates for not just Kontakt VIs, but Engine, Play, UVI Workstation/Falcon, Sine, etc, plus all regular VSTs. You can assign any cc message to any parameter knob--as many pages as you want. You can set up the light guides as you want and save that in the template too. Make sure you give the template a name before you start. When you load up an instrument later, you will need to select the correct template with the preset up and down arrows.


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## jbuhler (Mar 2, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Working in KK standalone, you can set up your own templates for not just Kontakt VIs, but Engine, Play, UVI Workstation/Falcon, Sine, etc, plus all regular VSTs. You can assign any cc message to any parameter knob--as many pages as you want. You can set up the light guides as you want and save that in the template too. Make sure you give the template a name before you start. When you load up an instrument later, you will need to select the correct template with the preset up and down arrows.


If I like the way the instrument developer has done an NKS, I will map that into the template as much as I can. (I haven't figured out how to copy an NKS setting to a template, if it is even possible.) I also try to keep the number of templates relatively small since there is not a good way to navigate them except with the preset arrows.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 3, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Working in KK standalone, you can set up your own templates for not just Kontakt VIs, but Engine, Play, UVI Workstation/Falcon, Sine, etc, plus all regular VSTs. You can assign any cc message to any parameter knob--as many pages as you want. You can set up the light guides as you want and save that in the template too. Make sure you give the template a name before you start. When you load up an instrument later, you will need to select the correct template with the preset up and down arrows.




I haven't touched templates until now so I certainly can say that I don't understand you right now lol.
I am currently reading the KK and Kontakt manuals simultaneously to learn more about them. Yes, I can assign cc messages to knobs and buttons using the MIDI menu. KK manual is very easy to understand and I almost finished it. I am sure Kontakt will take more of my time to understand.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 4, 2020)

Alright, now ..... As I am reading the manual, I stumbled across this advanced topic "MIDI Assignment Editor" for MIDI control/program change assignments to knobs, buttons, ...etc and save all that stuff in a template. I understand the concept but I still don't understand the details in the manual so I tried to google useful guides or tutorials regarding this matter and couldn't find any. I just found links to articles that still sound like the manual. I even watched the full video tutorial of "KK MK2 Power Start" in Groove3 as I am a full subscribed member there. However, most of the video were talking about very basic stuff such as browsing libraries, transport buttons, encoder knob usage, ...etc.

Currently, I am manually assigning the most important parameters in an instrument to my knobs using the learn CC. I mostly use instrument tracks rather than MIDI tracks and from what I understood so far in the MIDI Assignment Editor, is that I have to only use MIDI tracks because the configuration refers to MIDI track numbers. The "Learn CC" is enough for me in the time being until I fully understand MIDI Assignment templates.

Your 2 cents is always appreciated.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 4, 2020)

MeloKeyz said:


> Currently, I am manually assigning the most important parameters in an instrument to my knobs using the learn CC.


I think you'd be better off taking the time to do this properly. It's one of the best features in KK and it would be a shame not to use it.

You must do this in the standalone application. Make sure you have the *latest firmware*.

Click the little MIDI icon on the top right next to the NI logo.

Start by adding a new template, which you do by clicking the +. Give it a name.

Map a single knob. Decide what you want written under it. The first button says "CC14," but change that to "reverb" or whatever you want. Do MIDi learn on the software so that the amount of reverb is controlled by CC14, the default setting for that first knob. Or you can change the default setting for that knob to another cc.

You would do well to read up on MIDI messages on page 122 in the manual. You need to know what absolute, relative, and relative offset mean. You can do program changes with the knobs too. The manual clearly shows you how to do this. It's just selecting from dropdown menus.

Even if all you can do is set up 2 or 3 knobs you are ahead, because you are learning how to do this.
After your first 8 knobs, you can add as many pages of 8 knobs as you want. So it's not a bad idea to start doing this with a plan for how you want to set up your pages, if there will be many pages.

If you want, you can re-assign buttons. You can set up key zones which give different colors on the light guides--very handy to find Keyswitches, etc. You can change the assignment of the touchstrip. You can change the pedal setups. All of these things only affect this single template.

It will take you a little while to set up the first one, but after a while, it will become easy to do more. And you can always go back and add to your templates. I am always revising mine.

This is just the basics. You can have different MIDI channels for different key zones and create splits with different colors. Or all kinds of things. This is a very powerful feature. It's good to start building templates and then learn a little bit at a time to make it do what you want.

These templates only work when the MIDI button is lit. Then use the up and down preset arrows to find the right template.

Finally, you should learn where these templates are stored *HERE* so you can make backups. You don't want to lose all that work.



MeloKeyz said:


> I mostly use instrument tracks rather than MIDI tracks and from what I understood so far in the MIDI Assignment Editor, is that I have to only use MIDI tracks because the configuration refers to MIDI track numbers.


Not true. You just load up Komplete Kontrol as an instrument. Load up the instrument inside it, click the MIDI button and select the template.
What I do is save VSTs as track presets in Cubase where they load inside of KK.


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## jbuhler (Mar 4, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Finally, you should learn where these templates are stored *HERE* so you can make backups. You don't want to lose all that work.


This is essentially. I've already had KK flake out on me and lose the templates. Fortunately, I was able to get them from a backup of the drive, but I've since taken to storing them where they are easier to find.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 4, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I think you'd be better off taking the time to do this properly. It's one of the best features in KK and it would be a shame not to use it.
> 
> You must do this in the standalone application. Make sure you have the *latest firmware*.
> 
> ...



Amazing explanation my friend, thx a lot. I will give that a try again tomorrow. I've spent an hour to figure out how to do that but it didn't work out for me. I am just being overwhelmed by these Relative, Absolute, ..etc. terms. Please note that this is the first time I sit in front of a MIDI keyboard. So, I am a completely newbie in advanced configurations. Of course, I am not newbie in technology in general but just in advanced Audio/MIDI configs.


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## jbuhler (Mar 4, 2020)

MeloKeyz said:


> Amazing explanation my friend, thx a lot. I will give that a try again tomorrow. I've spent an hour to figure out how to do that but it didn't work out for me. I am just being overwhelmed by these Relative, Absolute, ..etc. terms. Please note that this is the first time I sit in front of a MIDI keyboard. So, I am a completely newbie in advanced configurations. Of course, I am not newbie in technology in general but just in advanced Audio/MIDI configs.


Just experiment. You can go back and change the behavior of the knobs once you've played with them and decided which mode makes sense. Just make assignments, either matching the knob CC to the default assignments in the plug-in or by mapping the assignments in the plugin to the default CCs on Komplete Kontrol keyboard. (And for this, don't open the plugin in the Komplete Kontrol software.)


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## Reid Rosefelt (Mar 4, 2020)

MeloKeyz said:


> Please note that this is the first time I sit in front of a MIDI keyboard. So, I am a completely newbie in advanced configurations. Of course, I am not newbie in technology in general but just in advanced Audio/MIDI configs.


You're doing great for a newbie! Just take it slow. Don't worry about "Relative, Absolute," just map a knob the way it is. 

And if you make cc changes in the original plugin, remember to save it with a new name so that those changes will be there when you load it up next.


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## MeloKeyz (Mar 5, 2020)

TigerTheFrog said:


> You're doing great for a newbie! Just take it slow. Don't worry about "Relative, Absolute," just map a knob the way it is.
> 
> And if you make cc changes in the original plugin, remember to save it with a new name so that those changes will be there when you load it up next.



OK, I have a new question now.

I opened my MIDI Assig. Editor today and worked on Template 1. I chose the "CC" type and have no clue which MIDI channel to use. This is the part that's confusing me. Based on my humble understanding, these channels are used to reference tracks in DAW. That's why I assumed that all my tracks should be MIDI not instrument tracks. So, as an experiment, I selected channel 1 along with the knob type "Relative" since I need this knob to be -1/1 approach. Closed the standalone KK and opened it in Cubase. Went to track 1, called up my instrument, and right clicked the reverb knob to learn the cc. I kept moving the knob to learn it but it didn't work. 

See, the manual is explaining things in a very technical robotic way rather than highlighting useful steps to do. 

What am I missing?


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## j523297 (Jun 10, 2020)

Hye everybody. Sorry for my bad english.
I'm on Windows 10, KK 2.3.0, Kontakt 6.2.2 and i found a solution for my troubles in KK. Some library were not showing up in KK, but OK in Kontakt and Native Access. For example, ARK 1/2/3/4.
You can open regedit here : KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Native Instruments\Metropolis Ark 1
You have to change Content Version : 1.0.0 to 2.1.0. It's works fine!
I hope it could work for you. Bye!!


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## j523297 (Jun 10, 2020)

And if you have a thumbnails problem on your KK MK2, i have a solution to create them.

You have to go here : C:\Users\Public\Documents\NI Resources\image

Create with your favorite image editor software six .png files :

- MST_artwork size 134x66
- MST_plugin size 126x108
- VB_artwork size 96x47
- MST_logo size 240x196
- OSO_logo size 416x65
- VB_logo size 227x47

You can find examples in the others directories of NI Resources which are working (for example Native libraries).

Bye!


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