# Kontakt 6, sampler in the cold?



## LinusW (Apr 19, 2019)

Back in september I had a distributor give me a demonstration on Komplete 12. I asked for a Kontakt 6 showcase. He showed me the larger Kontakt window and some new general and boring instrument libraries. So I asked for new features, what does Kontakt 6 actually bring to users to call it v6? More knobs? Optimization? 
-...well, the sound libraries are essentially it. There are so much more that can be made for third-party developers. 
-Ok? 
-We've got tools for developers making new possibilities. 
-So version 6 is more about developers creating content than for the composer noodling around in the plugin? 
-We don't have any third-party libraries for Kontakt 6 right now, but I'm sure a lot of folks are working on new libraries using new features. I think this spring will be amazing. 

So more than 6 months later, Massive X is still not released, no articles on new features in Kontakt 6 and I've yet to see a single 3rd party library requiring Kontakt 6. 

On the contrary, I see developers ready to abandon the Kontakt environment. 
Spitfire Audio made their own sample player, Orchestral Tools has revealed theirs too, UJAM and Soundiron libraries have been recast into Rack Extensions so Reason users won't need Kontakt, even more developers I can't mention are working on sampler engines... 
It seems like nobody wants to be the one forcing Kontakt users to upgrade because not even Native Instruments could motivate users on their own.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 19, 2019)

There's the new wavetable oscillator which is pretty useful and allows to nicely blend samples and synthesis, and new reverb and delay effects (sorely requested by devs for years), and new scripting features.

Yes, it's a more developer-focused update.

Noire requires K6. And yes, there are more K6 libs in the pipeline. One of them by yours truly, and pretty soon


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## Lukas (Apr 19, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> There's the new wavetable oscillator which is pretty useful and allows to nicely blend samples and synthesis, and new reverb and delay effects (sorely requested by devs for years), and new scripting features.


Yes, that's it.

There is so much that could have been improved workflow-wise. Nothing happened.

K6 is a joke. (at least the number in it)


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## GingerMaestro (Apr 19, 2019)

I'm planning to buy some Orchestral Tools Stuff when their new pick and mix store goes live. Would peoples advise be to avoid buying Kontakt, as this will presumably all work with their new sample player ? Does anyone know how much a Kontakt 6 crossgrade is when they have a sale and indeed when their next sale might be ? Thank you


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## LinusW (Apr 19, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> And yes, there are more K6 libs in the pipeline. One of them by yours truly, and pretty soon


Cool, bring it on!


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (Apr 19, 2019)

GingerMaestro said:


> I'm planning to buy some Orchestral Tools Stuff when their new pick and mix store goes live. Would peoples advise be to avoid buying Kontakt, as this will presumably all work with their new sample player ? Does anyone know how much a Kontakt 6 crossgrade is when they have a sale and indeed when their next sale might be ? Thank you



Most of OT libraries are designed to work with the free Kontakt Player  Actually, quite everything except the Berlin Expansions I think.


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## bcarwell (Apr 19, 2019)

I'll tell you one thing I experienced recently that gave me a distaste for K6. I had some libraries I was testing in K6 player, and batch resaved. When I tried to load samples from them in Cubase I got an error message that my Kontakt was too old to load them (5.8.1) Turns out if they were saved in K6, they won't load in a downlevel of Kontakt in Cubase. I had to get new uncorrupted Instrument files from the library vendors and re-install them substituting them for the existing Instruments. Happened with several libraries. I was going to upgrade to Kontakt 6 in the hopes that would be an easy fix, but decided that's crazy to pay $100 for something I don't need just to fix this (although its been many hours and hassle to do otherwise).

Bottom line: K6 thanks but no thanks...

Bob


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## tack (Apr 19, 2019)

bcarwell said:


> Turns out if they were saved in K6, they won't load in a downlevel of Kontakt in Cubase.


Isn't that the case for all versions of Kontakt though?


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## Ben H (Apr 19, 2019)

bcarwell said:


> Turns out if they were saved in K6, they won't load in a downlevel of Kontakt in Cubase.





tack said:


> Isn't that the case for all versions of Kontakt though?



Yes, this has always been the case.

There's no way a previous version of Kontakt can know what it's supposed to do with changes/additional features from a Kontakt version from the future.



bcarwell said:


> I had to get new uncorrupted Instrument files from the library vendors and re-install them substituting them for the existing Instruments. Happened with several libraries.



Not sure why you wouldn't just restore the files from your backups?


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## nathantboler (Apr 19, 2019)

All of our player library releases, from Mimi Page onward are Kontakt 6 Player.


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## g.c. (Apr 19, 2019)

Why not just leave K5 ,and even K4 and in my case K2 active as I do to run the things that newer versions of Kontakt and newer code revisions render no longer functional?
g.c.


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## kitekrazy (Apr 19, 2019)

LinusW said:


> Back in september I had a distributor give me a demonstration on Komplete 12. I asked for a Kontakt 6 showcase. He showed me the larger Kontakt window and some new general and boring instrument libraries. So I asked for new features, what does Kontakt 6 actually bring to users to call it v6? More knobs? Optimization?
> -...well, the sound libraries are essentially it. There are so much more that can be made for third-party developers.
> -Ok?
> -We've got tools for developers making new possibilities.
> ...



I refuse to buy sample based REs. Reason has no option for samples to be put on another drive. Kontakt as a VST in Reason has the advantage. I can see avoiding Kontakt Player because of fees. BTW the fees paid for Rack Extensions are no bargain either.


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## GtrString (Apr 20, 2019)

Native Instruments is a bit worrying, because many of us have invested a lot of dough in libraries for NI Kontakt. We just dont know the longevity of the products. All the other products from NI that were developed at the time Kontakt came out, is now legacy products they use to stuff out Komplete, so it looks the bundle. The changes are very incremental. The new stuff is often great, though, imo.

However, there are no guarantees that there will be Kontakt 7, or even Komplete 13. NI may decide that Komplete is now over with 12, and start a new line (but probably offer crossgrades and what not). We dont know. But 3rd party libs like ProjectSam Symphobia has proven to have a long shelf life, though, so even if this is the last Kontakt, the investment should be worth while for at least 10-15 years. Even if they shut down, in worst case scenario.

Compared to great analog instruments this is nothing, but I guess with virtual instruments this is as good as it gets.


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## LinusW (Apr 20, 2019)

I think Native Instruments have been very busy with Maschine and the NKS platform, developing hardware for a hardware based workflow instead of evolving GUIs in software. And so Kontakt becomes a small part in a giant rompler system where you browse for the next sound. 
Komplete 13 will certainly come, but I think the throne of the sampler engine is torn into pieces for tailor-made custom plugins.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 20, 2019)

Kontakt ain't going anywhere, folks.



LinusW said:


> but I think the throne of the sampler engine is torn into pieces for tailor-made custom plugins.



I don't think so. There's still lots of unknowns as far as performance of those other engines is concerned. Spitfire's isn't comparable to Kontakt (let's not talk about the GUI atrocity, while it's in a more modern style, sure, they made a lot of other UX mistakes), and all others are still a giant questionmark. And rest assured they are all probably going to be closed source and not open to 3rd parties, so it's not really comparable to Kontakt as a platform and a central hub for sample libraries.


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## thereus (Apr 20, 2019)

It's definitely NI's game to win or lose and all the other players are amateurs. The alternatives lack proper resource management and are limited to each company's own libraries by design. Many have other flaws. Spitfire seem to be releasing a different version for each library. Vienna's license model verges on the illegal. Play lacks basic control functionality. I could go on. Falcon is fabulous, incidently.

However, if NI wants to keep Kontakt as the universal powerhouse and avoid the proliferation of these inferior options, it is going to have to work hard to keep both the developers and the composers happy. It seems to me that it has not got the strategy quite right, if so many developers want to waste their resources on their own engines and so many users find the UI to be looking increasingly dated. It needs serious investment and a pricing review at the same time. Kontakt 6 doesn't seem to go far enough. If NI continue to just see it as just Kash Kow number 1, it will die a slow death that will be to nobody's benefit.






EvilDragon said:


> Kontakt ain't going anywhere, folks.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think so. There's still lots of unknowns as far as performance of those other engines is concerned. Spitfire's isn't comparable to Kontakt (let's not talk about the GUI atrocity, while it's in a more modern style, sure, they made a lot of other UX mistakes), and all others are still a giant questionmark. And rest assured they are all probably going to be closed source and not open to 3rd parties, so it's not really comparable to Kontakt as a platform and a central hub for sample libraries.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 20, 2019)

thereus said:


> Falcon is fabulous, incidently.



Yes, for sound design it really is. CPU and RAM usage with DFD is higher than Kontakt's, tho, and library management in Falcon isn't particularly great (there's nothing like tag-based database like Kontakt has, for example).



thereus said:


> if so many developers want to waste their resources on their own engines and so many users find the UI to be looking increasingly dated.



Note that there are hundreds of Kontakt library devs out there. There are only a few of them that are large enough to break off with their own thing, so saying "so many" paints a wrong picture, I'd say.



thereus said:


> If NI continue to just see it as just Kash Kow number 1, it will die a slow death that will be to nobody's benefit.



This is _exactly_ why K6 is a more developer-focused update, we got several things that were asked for years, like custom fonts, better spatial effects, certain other facilities, etc. I know a number of developers who are pretty happy with those additions.


You could ridicule Steve Ballmer all you want (me first!), but he was right about one thing. It's all about the developers (developers, developers, developers, developers...), when you have a _platform.

_


thereus said:


> Vienna's license model verges on the illegal



Hmmm... Care to elaborate?


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## d.healey (Apr 20, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> And rest assured they are all probably going to be closed source


Kontakt is closed source too.
HISE is a viable option for a lot of projects.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 20, 2019)

You're right. I really just meant to say 1st party only, not open to 3rd parties.

Considering HISE's viability, I sure don't see a lot of it being used despite it being available for some time now...


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## ism (Apr 20, 2019)

I can well take the point about the importance of the developer focus in K6.

But for me the question is whether these improvements will bring any benefits to orchestral libraries., specifically.

Additional effects, wavetables sound ... very nice for synths and hybrid instruments. I expect great things in, say, upcoming Output or Heavocity libraries. But I have no sense of any benefit for a user like my self who wants to see the state of the art pushed on, for instance, clarinet libraries.

OT and spitfire are at the very beginning of stepping outside the Kontakt ecosystem. OT is saying it’s explicitly because they want to push the envelope in orchestral sampling, while spitfire ... well while their marketing is for some reason studiously avoiding saying there will any benefit for high end users , it’s based on Hans Zimmer’s proprietary technology, and reading between the lines a bit, there’s every reason to hope that pushing the art of specifically orchestral sampling is also a driving force.

In practice though, so far as a know, there is no orchestral library that I can buy today that benefits from anything that beyond the state of the art of K5. And I have no idea how much this is likely to change in the next few years, or where the next significant step forward in sampling technology will come from.


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## thereus (Apr 20, 2019)

Agreed. Falcon is definitely behind in many areas. 

Yes, there are lots of developers working with Kontakt. Yes. Kontakt 6 does things they want. It still doesn't look like enough to me to bring the big devs back into the fold which is a shame. This is doubtless related to the costs of licenses also. NI is playing both sides which is no way to make a platform work. They risk slowly strangling their cash cow and it will be a long time before it dies, but everyone will have a lesser product on the way down.

The issue with Vienna licenses has been discissed on here many times so I won't start it off again. I will buy nothing else from them until they sort out the key replacement business.





EvilDragon said:


> Yes, for sound design it really is. CPU and RAM usage with DFD is higher than Kontakt's, tho, and library management in Falcon isn't particularly great (there's nothing like tag-based database like Kontakt has, for example).
> 
> Note that there are hundreds of Kontakt library devs out there. There are only a few of them that are large enough to break off with their own thing, so saying "so many" paints a wrong picture, I'd say.
> 
> ...


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## EvilDragon (Apr 20, 2019)

thereus said:


> This is doubtless related to the costs of licenses also.



Actually no, it's not. Spitfire is huge enough they can easily absorb the license cost, and I think Hendrik also posted somewhere that it wasn't a problem for them either, or the reason for them making their own sampler.

Licensing costs are only a problem for small developers, since it's a greater up-front risk which is solely absorbed by the developer. I do think this is a stance that should change at NI, and some people at NI are also very conscious about this, but we'll see what happens.


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## kitekrazy (Apr 20, 2019)

I don't get the doom and gloom over Kontakt. I think they should also market what it can do for the average person instead of being a rompler. There are 3rd party tutorials but as NI is doing their own "how to" they should include Kontakt. As for synth type Kontakt libraries out there it is almost endless.


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## puremusic (Apr 20, 2019)

The only beef I have with Kontakt is the tiny GUI. Spitfire's big knob and hieroglyphics is a strange goof for them, I'd prefer they stuck with Kontakt at this point rather than design everything with it. Yamaha made the same mistake with their Montage I wonder if this is some sort of trendy idea.


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## Light and Sound (Apr 20, 2019)

puremusic said:


> The only beef I have with Kontakt is the tiny GUI. Spitfire's big knob and hieroglyphics is a strange goof for them, I'd prefer they stuck with Kontakt at this point rather than design everything with it. Yamaha made the same mistake with their Montage I wonder if this is some sort of trendy idea.



People have been able to make larger UIs for quite some time with kontakt, the limitation on size isn't really an issue anymore, providing the developers doesn't mind putting in the time to update it.


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## Saxer (Apr 20, 2019)

At least as AU (Audio Unit) on Mac Kontakt 6 need less CPU compared to Kontakt 5 in some libraries. There was a significant CPU difference between AU and VST in K5. But that's relevant for Logic users only. I got the update with Komplete.


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## heisenberg (Apr 20, 2019)

There may not be many compelling reasons to move up to Kontakt 6 but for VEPro Template enthusiasts and as more & more libraries come out that are made for Kontakt 6 are released many of us will want to make the leap.

I hope that NI will have a summer sale on upgrades to the current Komplete series, so some of us can move up to their current software collection and call it day on Kontakt, Reaktor and Massive along with a bunch of other goodies.

Until then, I am reluctant to invest time improving my current master VEPro template. Kontakt 6 has to be in the stable so I can start the whole process over again.


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## JohannesR (Apr 20, 2019)

heisenberg said:


> There may not be many compelling reasons to move up to Kontakt 6 but for VEPro Template enthusiasts



Do you mind elaborating? Why is K6 attractive for VE Pro users?


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## kb123 (Apr 21, 2019)

When Kontakt 5 was first released there weren't many new features that set it apart from Kontakt 4. Fast forward several years and Kontakt 5 is in a different league to Kontakt 4.

Kontakt 6 may seem like it's only for developers, but it's just not the case. Much has changed under the hood to create a new base line that is more stable and more efficient than Kontakt 5 and this new baseline will form the basis for all the new stuff coming in Kontakt 6 during it's lifetime.


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 21, 2019)

ism said:


> In practice though, so far as a know, there is no orchestral library that I can buy today that benefits from anything that beyond the state of the art of K5. And I have no idea how much this is likely to change in the next few years, or where the next significant step forward in sampling technology will come from.



Steinberg Iconica perhaps ?


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## Alex Fraser (Apr 21, 2019)

ism said:


> OT and spitfire are at the very beginning of stepping outside the Kontakt ecosystem. OT is saying it’s explicitly because they want to push the envelope in orchestral sampling, while spitfire ... well while their marketing is for some reason studiously avoiding saying there will any benefit for high end users , it’s based on Hans Zimmer’s proprietary technology, and reading between the lines a bit, there’s every reason to hope that pushing the art of specifically orchestral sampling is also a driving force.


I'd imagine it boils down to money. With OT, stepping outside the Kontakt ecosystem will enable more buying choices (separate articulations) and put a storefront right in the middle of the DAW.

As for Spitfire..I'm not sure why the player exists. Perhaps it was an offshoot from the "labs" project, where SF would have wanted a way to get free stuff in the hands of users and not require "full" Kontakt.


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## thereus (Apr 21, 2019)

Spitfire's tool seems to be way behind Kontakt in every important area, other than "style" if that's your thing. If this is what Hans has been hiding from us all this time, it appears to be just smoke and mirrors...

I'd much prefer to have the Spitfire choir in Kontakt, for instance.

The commercially available tools that we use really are state-of-the-art. We are very lucky to be making music at such a time. It might not be so for ever...



Alex Fraser said:


> I'd imagine it boils down to money. With OT, stepping outside the Kontakt ecosystem will enable more buying choices (separate articulations) and put a storefront right in the middle of the DAW.
> 
> As for Spitfire..I'm not sure why the player exists. Perhaps it was an offshoot from the "labs" project, where SF would have wanted a way to get free stuff in the hands of users and not require "full" Kontakt.


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## paoling (Apr 21, 2019)

Actually if you compare Kontakt 6 with the first release of Kontakt 5 the improvements are huge. Maybe they aren't really noticeable, but there were a lot of new features introduced (like real numbers) that have allowed for a wide array of cool features.

So Kontakt 6 may seem like a new version of Kontakt 5 with some new stuff appeared for the first time (as the Creator Tools, the new effects or the waveform synth).

I'd wish that the Kontakt model would change completely. By the way how many people actually bothers with the "under the hood" controls of Kontakt? 

Why, instead of this "send it to us" and pay a lot of money scheme, Native Instruments can't release a complete package of tools to developers priced at 5.000$ or 10.0000$ that allows us to release any kind of library on our own that runs on the Kontakt Player?

It would be less hassle for NI, they would probably get the same money (updates to new versions of Kontakt will have a kind of upgrading scheme, so they would get a somewhat steady income from developers). And we would be free to release whatever we want being sure that any customer with just a DAW can run it on their system.


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## LinusW (Apr 21, 2019)

kb123 said:


> Much has changed under the hood to create a new base line that is more stable and more efficient than Kontakt 5


Very much happened under the hood in 5.6.8 too. 
I'm just saddened by that Kontakt UX had NI paint themselves into a corner to the point that developers would rather accept an inferior plugin than moving along with NI.


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## Lindon (Apr 21, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> You're right. I really just meant to say 1st party only, not open to 3rd parties.
> 
> Considering HISE's viability, I sure don't see a lot of it being used despite it being available for some time now...


then you are not looking...


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## Lindon (Apr 21, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Actually no, it's not. Spitfire is huge enough they can easily absorb the license cost, and I think Hendrik also posted somewhere that it wasn't a problem for them either, or the reason for them making their own sampler.
> 
> Licensing costs are only a problem for small developers, since it's a greater up-front risk which is solely absorbed by the developer. I do think this is a stance that should change at NI, and some people at NI are also very conscious about this, but we'll see what happens.




Mario is 100% correct about this - the license costs (whilst large for smaller developers) is probably not the reason small developers are moving away from Kontakt. Installed base and pace of change are much more likely - and are certainly the major reasons we have for leaving Kontakt behind. let me expand:

1. Installed base. If I build a viable VST/AU/AAX plug-in (with all the associated issues in that) then I end up being able to attract a MUCH larger base of potential customers compared to building a viable FULL-Kontakt-based product. Yes I can pay the license fee for player (every time for every product - with the associated risks Mario points at) - and this become a bit nearer moot, but as there is now a path to this larger audience without these fees and risks then......you get the picture.

2. As the general "complaint" in this thread alludes to Kontakt development moves very very very slowly - and developer requests dont (normally) get much air-time. Sure K6 is a "developer" release - but really - new reverbs / a wave player ? What happened to loadable - unloadable group configs etc etc.?

Our take is we will build Kontakt instruments for our customers if that's what they want - but if they take our advice there are more viable alternatives available.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 21, 2019)

Michael Antrum said:


> Steinberg Iconica perhaps ?



No lossless compression of samples, no background loading... 



paoling said:


> Actually if you compare Kontakt 6 with the first release of Kontakt 5 the improvements are huge. Maybe they aren't really noticeable, but there were a lot of new features introduced (like real numbers) that have allowed for a wide array of cool features.



Real numbers were introduced in K5.6, not K6. 



paoling said:


> Why, instead of this "send it to us" and pay a lot of money scheme, Native Instruments can't release a complete package of tools to developers priced at 5.000$ or 10.0000$ that allows us to release any kind of library on our own that runs on the Kontakt Player?
> 
> It would be less hassle for NI, they would probably get the same money (updates to new versions of Kontakt will have a kind of upgrading scheme, so they would get a somewhat steady income from developers). And we would be free to release whatever we want being sure that any customer with just a DAW can run it on their system.



Because it's not as easy as that!  Simply encoding to Kontakt Player is just one step in a huge process of around 80 steps that joins different parts of NI in order to put the library out on the market. Lots of databases, connections to marketing team, NKS validation, announcing it to Native Access for authorization, etc., all sorts of stuff happens. This all cannot be done by you as a 3rd party, that is why it's "send it to us".



Lindon said:


> then I end up being able to attract a MUCH larger base of potential customers compared to building a viable FULL-Kontakt-based product.



Do you have an idea how many installations of Kontakt there is out there in the world (and all of this is your potential customer base, technically)? You can't possibly top those numbers with a separate plugin on your first go at it unless you burn a helluva lot of money in marketing (which in turn ends up costing more than encoding for KP, and your platform might not be as stable as Kontakt is, etc.), and even then it might fail to reach that larger customer base you're alluding to. NI is an industry leader whatever anyone says, and their reach is among the largest out there. Probably only topped by Steinberg, Avid and Apple.


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## Saxer (Apr 21, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> NI is an industry leader whatever anyone says, and their reach is among the largest out there. Probably only topped by Steinberg, Avid and Apple.


Leader of the industry always have two sides. One side is to adore them. They worked hard to get into that position and they really have a lot to offer. On the other side industry leaders often try to defend their level with all the power their position contains. It's not as dangerous in our harmless business compared to the impact of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nestlé, Monsanto etc... but dropping the import of other formats is one of those little steps.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 21, 2019)

Saxer said:


> but dropping the import of other formats is one of those little steps.



Can still use K5 for that perfectly fine. Also, ask yourself what would be the reason for dropping such a feature. Could it be because an extreme minority of the userbase even used it, and it was a huge maintenance hassle for the dev team that took precious time from working on other things? Surely it cannot be anything reasonable like that, right?


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## Saxer (Apr 21, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Also, ask yourself what would be the reason for dropping such a feature.?


My answer would be: You can't sell libraries that are imported from other platforms. NI is the mother of in app sales.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 21, 2019)

Well, unless you created that library yourself on that other platform, and are owner of that IP, you cannot sell it no matter what  Not exactly a very good argument there.


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## heisenberg (Apr 21, 2019)

JohannesR said:


> Do you mind elaborating? Why is K6 attractive for VE Pro users?



Sure but I am afraid the answer is an underwhelming reason to upgrade. Up until Kontakt 6, when you move to a full version number upgrade of Kontakt on your current computer system, if you remove the older version of Kontakt, your template will break where an older version of Kontakt is used and the old one is gone from the system.

Let's say for sake of illustration you moved from Kontakt 4 to Kontakt 5 then plugin reference link in the VST host of choice such as VEPro would become broken, if the VEPro template in question was built using Kontakt 4. Going forward from Kontakt 6, the app will now be internally labelled as simply "Kontakt" with no version number in the internal naming that the VI/VST host VEPro uses when linking to the virtual instrument. I suppose you could keep the old version of Kontakt on your system but eventually the older version of Kontakt may just stop working once the OS gets upgraded and NI is not providing maintenance updates for their older versions of Kontakt.

My thinking on this is, VEPro templates are so tedious and labour intensive that you really want to have them future proofed where possible. This internal naming change in Kontakt to a version neutral one should help in this regard.


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## EvilDragon (Apr 21, 2019)

heisenberg said:


> Going forward from Kontakt 6, the app will now be internally labelled as simply "Kontakt" with no version number in the internal naming



There's no outright confirmation from NI on this actually being the case going forward. They just removed the version number from the plugin name. We'll see what happens around "Kontakt 7", I suppose. There's a number of ways things could go.


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## heisenberg (Apr 21, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> There's no outright confirmation from NI on this actually being the case going forward. They just removed the version number from the plugin name. We'll see what happens around "Kontakt 7", I suppose. There's a number of ways things could go.



Right. I thought there was an understanding between the third party devs and NI that this was the case. Oh well. Thanks for the clarification.


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## Lindon (Apr 22, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> ....snip....
> 
> Do you have an idea how many installations of Kontakt there is out there in the world (and all of this is your potential customer base, technically)?



Yes - as you know I've been doing this for over 10 years - I have a very good idea of the numbers.



EvilDragon said:


> You can't possibly top those numbers with a separate plugin on your first go at it unless you burn a helluva lot of money in marketing (which in turn ends up costing more than encoding for KP, and your platform might not be as stable as Kontakt is, etc.), and even then it might fail to reach that larger customer base you're alluding to.



Correct - but these issues/obstacles in marketing apply to Kontakt as much as a VST do they not? Plus I'm up for the encoding fees...Unless you are telling us that all I need do is encode for KP and it will sell to every Kontakt customer? I think you are not saying that. Because we both know from experience this is not the case.

But clearly if I have a "potential" customer base of say 1 million vs a "potential" customer base of say 100 million, then I think it not unreasonable to assume that I will sell more to my base of 100 million than I will to my base of 1 million.

This is especially true if my product is a sample library. If I make a Kontakt sample library (because in the end thats all I can actually do in Kontakt) my product arrives in a marketplace(the kontakt marketplace) where every other product is also a sample library. Sure they may be different in degrees but its a crowded space. Where as if I make a VST-based sample library I will launch into a potential audience where less than 20% of products are sample libraries..

Here's an example of what I mean. If I make a Drum Design Sample Library and launch it into the KP space - I'm up against NI's own DrumLab - which probably MOST Kontakt owners already have with their Komplete purchase. Why would most of this large installed base want to buy yet-another-drum-designer?

If on the other hand I make this as a VST instrument - then yeah sure there are several "drum designer" VST plug-ins out there. BUT....these don't come wrapped up with the platform, so there's a good chance many of my potential customer don't have this area covered....



EvilDragon said:


> NI is an industry leader whatever anyone says, and their reach is among the largest out there. Probably only topped by Steinberg, Avid and Apple.



Steinberg and Apple - from whom we get VST and AU....


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## EvilDragon (Apr 22, 2019)

Lindon said:


> Why would most of this large installed base want to buy yet-another-drum-designer?



Maybe because it has different sounds and feature set? Maybe it's more up their alley?


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## Per Boysen (May 22, 2019)

Does anyone know how to get Kontakt (6) to be detected by Cubase Pro 10 under Windows 7? Cubase gives me Kontakt 5, but not #6. However, Kontakt (6) shows up fine in Ableton and Bitwig that I currently work a lot in, but not in Cubase. Unfortunately, I have made important custom multis in K6 and these can't load into K5, so I'm actually locked out from using my Cubase until this gets sorted out. Ideas, please?


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## EvilDragon (May 23, 2019)

Check plugin paths, check Cubase's blacklist. Could be that for whatever reason 32-bit version got installed in 64-bit path and Cubase won't see any 32-bit plugins, etc.


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## Per Boysen (May 25, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Check plugin paths, check Cubase's blacklist. Could be that for whatever reason 32-bit version got installed in 64-bit path and Cubase won't see any 32-bit plugins, etc.


Thank you, EvilDragon, I checked for that but the issue actually had to do with the dll being installed at (on a Windows system) "C:/Program Files/Vstplugins", where most of my 64 bit stuff are. And Cubase Pro just didn't see it there. It got detected after I had moved the dll to "C:/Program Files/Steinberg/vstplugins".


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