# Native Instruments Kontakt - Future developments?



## homie (Jan 19, 2022)

Last year i bought several Kontakt libraries being fairly sure the Kontakt engine will be around forever. But now i see all kind of new proprietary players pop up everywhere and comments like this:



Quantum Leap said:


> Developers made their own players to gain full control over their product and copy protection and for other good reasons. Everyone is doing it now because there is talk that Kontakt won’t be supported forever. I hope that’s not true, but that’s the word.



Since i'm not interested in all these new players/romplers i'm eager to have some clarification on the future of Kontakt.


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## Marcus Millfield (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> Since i'm not interested in all these new players/romplers i'm eager to have some clarification on the future of Kontakt.


As do we all. Probably just need to wait and see what the future holds in store. Can't see NI abandoning Kontakt in the near future though, as a lot of companies still use it.


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## AndrewS (Jan 19, 2022)

> Everyone is doing it now because there is talk that Kontakt won’t be supported forever.


While a lot of developers _are_ bringing their own samplers into production, you really do have to consider the source on that quote.


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## Rudianos (Jan 19, 2022)

They must challenge their profit motive a bit and give these other developers a better offer. RnD on Kontakt cannot cost that much, nor the server space ... It is about the best there is and the most fun to browse... but like many big companies they are too slow to innovate at this stage. If the next update does not include the ability to work well on 4k with Presonus etc ... lack of ability to willingness to keep with the times


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jan 19, 2022)

I think it would take years if/when Kontakt is no longer supported, especially considering the thousands of professional users out there (100K+ maybe?). I wouldn't be concerned by any means. Nick Phoenix is merely relaying a rumour he'd heard. And even if it stopped, you'd be migrated to NI's new player along with the other developer's players (just like OT did with SINE).


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## Casiquire (Jan 19, 2022)

Kontakt lets anyone make a library. All those other players don't. Therefore Kontakt still has a distinct market advantage and as such it's likely to stay for now


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jan 19, 2022)

And unlike most other players, it’s an industry-standard sampler.


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## homie (Jan 19, 2022)

Many good points made so far.

That Francisco Partners involvement makes me really nervous though.


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## mybadmemory (Jan 19, 2022)

Of course it is. As is everything! Nothing in this world lasts forever, yet alone digital products. They all have a lifecycle, a lifespan, and will eventually be replaced by something new. It will probably be around for some time still, especially for smaller developers, but the bigger ones are certainly moving to their own players for a reason. And some of them even bring on smaller devs with them to their new platforms. I think we’ll most likely see more of those kinds of collaborations. Kontakt may be the industry standard for professionals, but 90% of the market is not professionals but newcomers and hobbyists. The barrier of entry to something like the spitfire player, or SINE player is certainly much lower.


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## Mike Greene (Jan 19, 2022)

Kontakt is an absolute cash cow for NI. Not only selling the application itself, but all the libraries they own outright, or collect a cut from when they sell them on their website. It's gotta be tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Ain't nobody gonna pull the plug on that.


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## labyrinths (Jan 19, 2022)

Didn't they just launch a subscription service that includes loads of Kontakt instruments? Why would they stop supporting Kontakt now when they just built a new SaaS business model around it (not to mention all the existing users and libraries)? What evidence is this "talk" based on?


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## Crowe (Jan 19, 2022)

For every big company that can develop and maintain their own proprietary sampler there are hundreds of companies and developers that cannot.

Also it's their own sampler which has many libraries.


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## homie (Jan 19, 2022)

mybadmemory said:


> Of course it is. As is everything! Nothing in this world lasts forever, yet alone digital products. They all have a lifecycle, a lifespan, and will eventually be replaced by something new.


Sure, but what about our old project files which won't open correctly anymore? In the digital world it's perfectly possible to maintain backwards compatibility. I fear companies cutting corners there. But it's at least as important as innovation imo.


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## Marsen (Jan 19, 2022)

Mike Greene said:


> Kontakt is an absolute cash cow for NI. Not only selling the application itself, but all the libraries they own outright, or collect a cut from when they sell them on their website. It's gotta be tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Ain't nobody gonna pull the plug on that.


This!

And if you look at the latest ProjectSAM update, you see what kontakt still is capable of.
The new Symphobia GUI is one of the smoothest, cleanest, most enjoyable experience, one can get from a VI. 
No ballast, everything is there you wanna to have it.


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## jcrosby (Jan 19, 2022)

AndrewS said:


> While a lot of developers _are_ bringing their own samplers into production, you really do have to consider the source on that quote.


Given who the source is I personally think it's likely to be very well sourced.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> Sure, but what about our old project files which won't open correctly anymore? In the digital world it's perfectly possible to maintain backwards compatibility. I fear companies cutting corners there. But it's at least as important as innovation imo.


I think you'll have gone through a few computers and major DAW updates before that happens.


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## Cdnalsi (Jan 19, 2022)

I don't know about dying but they're taking their sweet time with a native M1 version...


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## mybadmemory (Jan 19, 2022)

Cdnalsi said:


> I don't know about dying but they're taking their sweet time with a native M1 version...


And UI resolution…


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## AndrewS (Jan 19, 2022)

jcrosby said:


> Given who the source is I personally think it's likely to be very well sourced.


Undoubtedly. However, it is an opinion espoused by someone with a significant vested interest in a non-Kontakt sampler, so it's hard to view as unbiased.


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## jcrosby (Jan 19, 2022)

AndrewS said:


> Undoubtedly. However, it is an opinion espoused by someone with a significant vested interest in a non-Kontakt sampler, so it's hard to view as unbiased.


That same player happens to have been divorced from Kontakt for over a decade. EW are well established already. I don't see the point of him making a comment like that for what? Shits and giggles?


At least ask yourself this... What cut of the action does NI get from a "quickload" library that doesn't require that developer to go through NI for a license? Nothing obviously...


I don't necessarily see it being unlikely if NI did something like keep Kontakt Player around for non-subscribers, but make something like a "Kontakt Pro" version that required a subscription. That happens to be the same move Izotope made who are now under the same umbrella.


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## dunamisstudio (Jan 19, 2022)




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## homie (Jan 19, 2022)

AndrewS said:


> Undoubtedly. However, it is an opinion espoused by someone with a significant vested interest in a non-Kontakt sampler, so it's hard to view as unbiased.


NI could do some damage control and get in touch with us about all our unanswered questions and creating confidence in the future of their products along the way.


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## homie (Jan 19, 2022)

jcrosby said:


> I don't necessarily see it being unlikely if NI did something like keep Kontakt Player around for non-subscribers, but make something like a "Kontakt Pro" version that required a subscription. That happens to be the same move Izotope made who are now under the same umbrella.


Sounds horrible. Don't give them any (bad) ideas


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## jcrosby (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> Sounds horrible. Don't give them any (bad) ideas


If I can imagine it I'm sure some stuffed shirt in a board room whose soul(less) purpose in life is to maximize profits already has as well


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## d.healey (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> In the digital world it's perfectly possible to maintain backwards compatibility.


It's possible to take a helicopter to go to the supermarket, but it isn't economical or practical.

If you want to make sure your projects open in 10 years time use a DAW that saves the project file to a human readable or open format such as XML and render all of your tracks as audio.



homie said:


> i see all kind of new proprietary players pop up everywhere


Proprietary... you mean, like Kontakt?


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## Tralen (Jan 19, 2022)

jcrosby said:


> I don't necessarily see it being unlikely if NI did something like keep Kontakt Player around for non-subscribers, but make something like a "Kontakt Pro" version that required a subscription. That happens to be the same move Izotope made who are now under the same umbrella.


I think that is exactly where we are heading.


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## homie (Jan 19, 2022)

d.healey said:


> Proprietary... you mean, like Kontakt?


Yes, more stuff we don't have control over.. exactly like Kontakt


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## clisma (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> Yes, more stuff we don't have control over.. exactly like Kontakt


Except that Kontakt is actually a SAMPLER (Ok ok, without an input, fine.) Unlike the PLAYERS/ROMPLERS being released by these companies. I like Kontakt simply for that. And NI does make the whole cut on selling it for that purpose. Subscription or not, I don't think it's going anywhere for the time being. And elsewhere on this forum there was talk about an impending M1 version, as quoted from the NI fora.


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## Trash Panda (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> Is Native Instruments Kontakt dying?


No.


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## gsilbers (Jan 19, 2022)

itll be around for a while.

Its also about JUCE which is a new way/platform/coding to make plugins. Makes it easier to make samplers and synths/effects plugins than making then in older code. From what i gather its easier to make cross platform plugins for major daws plugin formats.
So if those companies are making their own, then you can see how expensive it is to release a sample library in kontakt player that it makes sense making your own sampler/romplayer. Plus the kontakt security is not famous for being.. well, secure.
And also, kontakt is a mainstream plugin for us, but outside this bubble, kontakt is not well liked or used in other genres. And its Konfusing player vs full versions.

Also how cool is to make your own plugin!
And of course not be inside someone elses ecosystem. NI will be around for a while but just got bought by some hedge fund something mega corp who might end up making the next M-audio. Or might make it the next apple. .. who knows.


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## ALittleNightMusic (Jan 19, 2022)

Remember when GigaSampler was the biggest name in town?


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## YaniDee (Jan 19, 2022)

mybadmemory said:


> Nothing in this world lasts forever, yet alone digital products. They all have a lifecycle, a lifespan, and will eventually be replaced by something new.


Can't argue with that, and I'm open to moving with the times..but..there's no way I would accept loosing thousands of dollars spent on libraries, Komplete versions (I'm currently on K13 U CE), and years worth of work on projects that I couldn't open because Kontakt didn't work any more..If I had to get a cracked version I would do so without an ounce of remorse..In any case, I've just realized that I'm getting worked up over rumors and innuendos..Frankly, this discussion is detrimental to all the companies releasing Kontakt libraries on an almost daily basis..


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## Lode_Runner (Jan 19, 2022)

AndrewS said:


> While a lot of developers _are_ bringing their own samplers into production, you really do have to consider the source on that quote.





AndrewS said:


> it is an opinion espoused by someone with a significant vested interest in a non-Kontakt sampler, so it's hard to view as unbiased.


It's a quote from the same guy who said:
"Spaces 2 crushes Altiverb for orchestral film work. It’s Mclaren versus Hyundai. Altiverb is amazing and broad ranging reverb software that sounds like mush."


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## RonOrchComp (Jan 19, 2022)

ALittleNightMusic said:


> Remember when GigaSampler was the biggest name in town?


Remember when there were no sample libraries?


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## Geoff Grace (Jan 19, 2022)

RonOrchComp said:


> Remember when there were no sample libraries?


Remember when Isao Tomita did mock-ups using synthesizers?

(What were we talking about again?)

Best,

Geoff


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## proxima (Jan 19, 2022)

The only way Kontakt dies is if some other platform comes through that offers most everything that Kontakt does plus at least some of the following: 1.) More difficult to crack libraries, 2.) Lower fees for distribution to users who haven't paid, 3.) Nicer UI with easier development.

An open source sampler could do it. But the VI community is quite tepid on open source relative to many others. These days it often takes a commercial (or serious non-profit) entity to lead an endeavor for the most polished product (see, e.g. Musescore). No sample company has that much of an incentive these days to do it - building a bespoke sampler without opening it up for outside development is much easier...

That said, Kontakt development could stagnate pretty badly if NI doesn't prioritize it. I have to imagine the codebase by this point is a bit of a beast.


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## Nico5 (Jan 19, 2022)

Maybe someone is motivated to play this game?






Fear, uncertainty, and doubt - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org


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## Faheem Hasan (Jan 19, 2022)

Hello all, I'm Faheem, Product Manager for the NKS Ecosystem at Native, and I'd like to jump in here to clear the air around these rumours that have sprung up about us not supporting KONTAKT anymore. While my statement here may not be an "official" press release statement from NI's end, you can be rest assured that these rumours and FUD are not based on fact. As @Mike Greene very well mentioned in a previous reply here, KONTAKT is a very important component of our business model, both for our own business as well as for all of the 3rd Party businesses that are part of our NKS & KONTAKT Player Ecosystem. 

We are continuously developing the KONTAKT Platform and evolving it to suit the needs of modern music makers. Rest assured, there are no plans underway to "kill" KONTAKT in any way. We are very much committed to ensuring it's survival for the sake of our Partners, our dedicated and loyal customers, and of course, for our own sake as well 

As for why other manufacturers have decided to create their own players, well all I can say is : It's a FREE Market. Anyone can do as they please. We do not prohibit anyone, especially not our partners, from going ahead and building what they see to be fit for their business. All businesses are in a state of evolution, and we as Native, are definitely not capable of catering to each and every need of every business out there. We try our best to cover as much ground as we can, but in the areas where we cannot offer services at the moment, companies innovate and create their own solutions. We do not see this as a threat, but rather as a benefit to the community as whole. If there's one thing musicians and producers have always loved, it's Choice!  

I hope this helps to restore some confidence in the community


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## Faheem Hasan (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> NI could do some damage control and get in touch with us about all our unanswered questions and creating confidence in the future of their products along the way.


Happy to do so ! (As far as possible, there are some private internal topics that we are unable to shed light on due to confidentiality reasons)


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## Trash Panda (Jan 19, 2022)

HiDPI compatibility coming any time soon?


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## Faheem Hasan (Jan 19, 2022)

Trash Panda said:


> HiDPI compatibility coming any time soon?


Can’t reveal any details here but yes, we are working on it.


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## Robo Rivard (Jan 19, 2022)

As far as I'm concerned, Kontakt will soon be a dead format if they don't make their GUI fully scalable (it feels more and more like Best Service's Engine as the time goes by). Come on guys, this is 2022!!

The VSL Synchron Player is setting the new standards for the lazy developpers.


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## Nico5 (Jan 19, 2022)

I generally prefer to interpret a company's visible and tangible activities rather than pay much attention to rumors without accompanying evidence.

And what have I seen Native Instruments do over the last little while? Make Kontakt 6 with quite a bit of additional capability, release Creator Tools for Kontakt developers, and make Kontakt 6 available as a VST3 plugin. All of that activity seems very inconsistent with a dying platform.

And those actions speak even louder to me than the assuring words of @Faheem Hasan, which are nonetheless much appreciated. 

p.s. Large and successful library developers creating their own platforms, thus reducing external business dependencies is a routine business evolution in pretty much every industry I know of. Once you're big enough you tend to bring more things in-house.


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## Lee Blaske (Jan 19, 2022)

Obviously, even if all the other developers depart, Kontakt will still be used for all of NI's products (as their proprietary player). That's a pretty vast range of content. So, Kontakt isn't going anywhere.

I do wonder, though, about the viability of NKS, if it only runs on NI hardware. I struggled with an S88, and then an S88 MkII. The interface stuff is nice, but those keyboards aren't professional grade in any way shape or form. Horrible Fatar actions.


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## José Herring (Jan 19, 2022)

homie said:


> Last year i bought several Kontakt libraries being fairly sure the Kontakt engine will be around forever. But now i see all kind of new proprietary players pop up everywhere and comments like this:
> 
> 
> 
> Since i'm not interested in all these new players/romplers i'm eager to have some clarification on the future of Kontakt.


I first heard this rumor in 2008 or so. I panicked spread it around made others panic, including one very well known developer that was about to release his very first product. I know where the rumor started too. After nearly 15 years it's safe to assume it's just a rumor.


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## PaulieDC (Jan 19, 2022)

Just consider a couple things before we all laugh at the wolf blowing on the brick house. Kontakt is software, very good, very complex and that means _nothing_ unless you have an audience. It will not be around forever because the ecosystem is changing. Before you blast me, hear me out: I'm old, but I'm new to MIDI Orchestration. There are a plethora of new young guns arising who have zero emotional attachment to the long fruitful journey that many of the seasoned pros and longtime members have on this forum with Kontakt. That includes me. I'm thrilled that I now can use Synchron and SINE and the Spitfire Player. I develop software, I know these apps will improve and I'm fine with that. The Kontakt UI is not great, it's a mass of a bazillion amazing choices that requires mouse clicks galore, along with archaic navigation like Play (that's subjective, you may love it). But the upcoming new generation is seeing Spitfire and even OT be really involved in offering GREAT libraries plus a plethora of low cost and freebies, plus the enormous social presence with walkthroughs and tutorials galore, straight from the owners. Tthat's what's going to capture the attention of the incoming and upcoming crew and the need for Kontakt will dwindle due to market-share. But wait, Kontakt lets you build sample libraries, right? With all that has emerged in the last 8 years as far as choices out there, how much of a consumer base will there be for making your own stuff? I may be way off but I believe the trend is heading over to the completed library side, and the uncountable amount of music pieces being shown and played on social media is being consumed by the up and coming who are hearing about these newer companies, so that's all they know. When the experienced composers were going through the development of all of this from floppies to GigaSampler to Kontakt, it's all you knew and there wasn't a mass distribution of that experience on our Motorola flip phones.

There's a lot of great stuff out there now. Expensive and complex will start to fade. Are recording studios the mecca of all music now, or are we home working successfully in the box? The next wave of composers aren't going to know the journey nor see the need. In fact, the millennial generation has done a couple things I absolutely love... the whole car buying process that will never go away? Ha, they ditched that and now we have Carvana and others like it. Real Estate insanity and expensive realtor fees? See ya! Hello OfferPad.

I know... I've over-made my point again. I just see the landscape changing. Music stores on 47th St in NYC like Manny's and Sam Ash were the absolute hotspot of the current music scene back in the 80s. That street is now abandoned like most shopping malls. So the current need for Kontakt CAN change, and I personally think that the OP asking the question proves the slow slide, but it's just conjecture... I know you want to throttle me right now.

On the other side, EDM/Pop/Hip-Hop and Rock get everything they need with a full Komplete library. But IF it's changing for film scoring, it can change there also. I just suggest we don't take the Titanic approach, that "no way will this ship sink"... new stuff is coming at a rapid rate.

But I will say this, if we didn't have Kontakt, I wouldn't have Mike Greene's awesome RealiBanjo, and that really _would _be a bummer. Srsly.

(oh boy... I'm going to get shredded on THIS post, lol)


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## charlieclouser (Jan 19, 2022)

In terms of the product's health, I predict Kontakt is not in the ICU, hasn't even been admitted into the hospital, and probably hasn't even made an appointment with its doctor in years. Maybe it's taking Tylenol 3x a day for "migration pain" but that's about it.

• As others have pointed out, Kontakt is a *sampler* - and an amazingly powerful one at that. With the various time-stretching and beat-slicing modes, wavetable stuff, Creator Tools, built-in effects at the per-voice level, and the mind-boggling possibilities of the scripting engine, it's waaaayyy out in front of any competition. Even my beloved Logic Sampler must sit down and shut up when big daddy walks in the room. Any dev that wanted to directly compete with Kontakt on features would have years of work in front of them.

• Even if every third party dev that pays a royalty to NI so they can have an encoded Player library were to stop tomorrow, NI still has a massive and impressive hunk of in-house content in Komplete that would make it worth continuing to support the engine.

• The third-party non-Player world is beyond immense. Take a scroll through Loot Audio sometime, but you'd better set aside a week of time to do it! Even if NI's sole income from Kontakt was from end users who were buying the full version just so they could access all those $49 - $99 libraries on Loot Audio, it would be worth it for them I reckon.

• Comparisons to GigaSampler aren't directly applicable I think. Although they basically invented disc-streaming for samplers - and for that I hope they never need to work another day in their lives - Nemesys was a single-product company who eventually sold the product to Tascam (?!?!), who let it wither on the vine. Shades of the Gibson buyout of Opcode anyone? And to a large extent, GigaSampler was almost a ROMpler engine, much like Play/Opus/Sine/Spitfire are. Or at least it was positioned as such even if its feature set was more open than the modern ones.

• All of the in-house ROMpler engines may improve and even turn into more full-featured sampler engines, but the same factors that would seem to endanger Kontakt affect them as well. They, too, need to be constantly updated, improved, made Apple Silicon native, etc. - and those in-house teams are probably a bit smaller than the NI covert ops team down at Langley. On the upside, they're not facing the same legacy codebase issues and fragile apple cart of potentially delicate third-party content that they don't want to upset, so they can be more nimble in those regards, but any issues NI is facing with adding HiDPI or AS support will affect the in-house ROMpler devs as well.

• And, as others have pointed out, all of the recent in-house ROMpler engines are just that - ROMpler engines, and pretty basic ones at that. Other than the built-in content shop and mic-mixing stuff, Sine is like a freeware SoundFont player from 1997! Even though the content is top-shelf, you can't do much more with Sine than play some MIDI notes in and listen to the output. Others, like Opus and Spitfire, are approaching the functionality you'd get from a well-scripted Kontakt Player version, but lack any ability to get under the hood and mess with stuff as you could with a Full Kontakt library. Of course, they do offer the devs Complete Control™ over their content, at the expense of the added workload of developing their own freakin' codebase, but only the biggest players in the biz can take on that challenge. (SoundPaint is a bit of an outlier, offering stuff that others don't have, but it was a multi-year effort for sure.) 

After collaborating with Spitfire on Hammers I could see that an in-house codebase could be an advantage in that they could implement the features I was requesting from scratch, as opposed to trying to figure out a way to drive Kontakt's engine with elaborate scripting in order to produce the desired result, but this was not a trivial exercise even though the stuff I was requesting was not really that far-out. In the end it worked spectacularly, and now that those features have been figured out Spitfire can implement them in other products if they wish, but it wasn't trivial - and I was banging a gong pretty loud on that stuff...

So.... yeah, I predict a rosy future for Kontakt as it continues to sit on its throne atop a mountain of third-party libraries and both high-end and beginning users.


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## Nico5 (Jan 19, 2022)

Lee Blaske said:


> struggled with an S88, and then an S88 MkII.


I can't speak to those models, but have been pretty happy with my S61 MK2


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## PaulieDC (Jan 19, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> In terms of the product's health, I predict Kontakt is not in the ICU, hasn't even been admitted into the hospital, and probably hasn't even made an appointment with its doctor in years. Maybe it's taking Tylenol 3x a day for "migration pain" but that's about it.
> 
> • As others have pointed out, Kontakt is a *sampler* - and an amazingly powerful one at that. With the various time-stretching and beat-slicing modes, wavetable stuff, Creator Tools, built-in effects at the per-voice level, and the mind-boggling possibilities of the scripting engine, it's waaaayyy out in front of any competition. Even my beloved Logic Sampler must sit down and shut up when big daddy walks in the room. Any dev that wanted to directly compete with Kontakt on features would have years of work in front of them.
> 
> ...


Oooo, what timing, your very well-written post is smack up against mine with two diametrically opposed takes on this. I like it!


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## zimm83 (Jan 20, 2022)

K6.7 will be native apple sillicon compatible....Okay ? Dying ???' Official NI forums and beta testers....


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## Ivan M. (Jan 20, 2022)

It's not going anywhere, because it has no real alternative and brings in money. 
This market really really needs a good competitor. If there was one, we would probably already have had m1 and high dpi support.


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## Pianolando (Jan 20, 2022)

charlieclousers take makes very much sense I think. While all eras eventually end and Kontakt definitely will be replaced by younger alternatives someday, I don't think much points to that time being close. Also, it looks like making your own sample player engine isn't easy at all, Sine still has huge problems and cannot yet deliver what they promised it would.

Let's hope NI continues to develop Kontakt and add exiting new features, I believe that's what's needed to eventually get sample libraries that are truly next generation.

EDIT: as Ivan points out, a real competitor would be great to accelerate progress. Right now there isn't any real alternative.


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## TomislavEP (Jan 20, 2022)

I don't think that Kontakt will go out of style anytime soon despite the fact that most of us use it primarily as yet another engine rather than as a comprehensive development tool. Speaking of which, the ecosystem of products based on this platform is simply too large for some dramatic changes to happen in the foreseeable future. Especially with the fact that NI themselves actively develop libraries for their own products.

I'm not a developer myself, but I'm guessing that it makes more sense for many smaller boutique outfits out there to stick with an "industry standard" as a basis for their products, rather than trying to develop their own platform or embracing something free instead, but not as nearly as widespread and popular. Of course, I won't comment on the possible licensing costs (I'm assuming there are none if the library remains in an open format).

Kontakt might be an industry standard, but it definitely has its shortcomings. It remains quite a pricey piece of software, even as a part of Komplete packages. Furthermore, despite its long history and level of maturity, it could do with some improvements. If nothing else, a few details regarding the display and the ease of use. Personally, I would like to see more keyboard shortcuts (customizable, if possible) in the future, especially those for some day-to-day actions.


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## novaburst (Jan 20, 2022)

I think even NI knows that the music industry is not a stagnant one, NI has seen a few changes in its journey with music makers and developers, VSL, East West, has long since developed their own player, 

Its clear especially when you see the caperbility of the new Syncron player that there are a lot of benefits for developers to have their own identity and their own player, with their own security and or license. 

One factor with joining a huge music development and using one player Kontakt is if that player gets cracked then all instruments are at risk of becoming freebies, for torrent downloads 

Other factors are obvious were the developer are able to fine tune and expand and innovation of their instruments for that player, there are so many benifits.

Like wise there are benifits buy using Kontakt,

But it doesn't make sense to think that no developers are going to want to do things differently or experiment with ideas.

There will be tons of new and future developers that are going to use Kontakt, also some will want to try other means of distribution of their creation.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 20, 2022)

Ivan M. said:


> This market really really needs a good competitor. If there was one, we would probably already have had m1 and high dpi support.


Falcon is a decent alternative (not without its own caveats), but UVI for some reason never really pursued direct head to head competition.


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## charlieclouser (Jan 20, 2022)

PaulieDC said:


> Oooo, what timing, your very well-written post is smack up against mine with two diametrically opposed takes on this. I like it!


Hahah yeah perfect timing indeed! As much as it sounds like I'm defending Kontakt or trying to make a good case for its survival, I'm trying to think of it from NI's perspective, and whether or not THEY think it's worth the hassle of keeping it current and viable - not whether we (the old farts who still reminisce about Akai S-1000's and SyQuest drives) or the young guns (who don't give a crap about user sampling and just want to make beats using LoopCloud or Arcade) think it's viable.

As I have stated ad nauseam, it's EXS24 / Sampler that does 99% of the heavy lifting for me, and I barely even use Kontakt except as a portal to buying+exporting WAVs for use in EXS, or as a way to access locked-down legato-transition libraries. But I recognize that it's a beast, even if I prefer to use a simpler solution like EXS. 

For a while there I was predicting / hoping that Apple would roll up to NI headquarters with a trainload of cash and pull a Camel Audio, leaving Win users out in the cold and perhaps convincing some portion of them to switch to Mac just to continue having access to their Kontakt libraries. Maybe they already have, and were rebuffed. Or maybe they took a sniff and said, "pass", who knows. The fact that Apple seems to be moving more toward the Arcade / LoopCloud "easy beat creation" market is another indicator that backs up your view. 

But I won't be a bit surprised if us old heads who are still deluded enough to value a uber-complete feature set wind up being left behind and we end up sitting on the porch at the old sample-collectors home grumbling about, "Back in my day, samplers let you change the loop crossfades, and that's not all...."

Even though I routinely cough up hairballs about how we used to do things "back in my day" when sampling "meant something", I'm the guy who uses the bog-simple EXS because I simply don't need much more than that. So I'm a good example of "workflow trumps functionality" in that I'm fine to lose multi-mic positions and legato-transitions in return for being able to use an in-DAW browser and "save instruments and samples with project". 

Part of what I don't like about the flood of in-house ROMpler engines, besides the hassle of keeping multiple engines updated, is that I forget that I have them, and forget which engine hosts which sounds, etc. Having it all under a single second-party engine like Kontakt makes it a bit easier to find and use stuff. Quickload, yadda yadda. 

And to be honest, the times when I like using Kontakt are when I'm using a highly-evolved library like ArcLight or Thrill, in which going under the hood isn't practical even if it were possible, and it therefore might as well be a ROMpler engine.

Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to encourage NI to keep the fires burning under Kontakt (not that they need my help), but, as clunky and non-HiDPI as it is, every time I'm under the hood of the thing I come away impressed at just how mega a platform it is. But if it's too much hassle for even someone like me to call my home, I agree that the young guns are likely to be like, "I think my dad used to use a sampler like that..."

All that said, Kontakt really is great, even if it's greatness is lost on many / most / me.


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## charlieclouser (Jan 20, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Falcon is a decent alternative (not without its own caveats), but UVI for some reason never really pursued direct head to head competition.


I agree that Falcon is a strong competitor - on paper at least, the feature set is bonkers, especially the Ircam stuff, if sometimes a bit fiddly and obscure - and it does sound great and work flawlessly on my rig, no complaints there.

UVI seem to have at least attempted to position it not solely as a user-sample creation tool, but also to have player-style libraries with custom front panels, etc. Maybe not a huge wealth of third-party player libraries, but it's not just a token effort. I have a bunch of Falcon / UVI Workstation libraries and many are quite good. But again, due to so many engines in my plug-in menu, half the time I forget that I have them!


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## Vik (Jan 20, 2022)

Faheem Hasan said:


> We are continuously developing the KONTAKT Platform and evolving it to suit the needs of modern music makers. Rest assured, there are no plans underway to "kill" KONTAKT in any way.


Hi, and thanks for chiming in! I don't think anyone suspect NI for not _wanting_ to keep developing Kontakt – the concerns some of us have are related to the fact that an increasing number of sample library makers now are making their own players (now also including CineSamples and Light & Sound), combined with the fact that an Apple Silicon version of Kontakt is still not out – and some worries, from some users, about Kontakt is being so far behind where it should be that it could take a lot more time before the release of a Kontakt version that not only was updated to run natively on Apple Silicon, but also have much better specs than today. One of these concerns have been posted in one of the M1 threads, with statements like "I personally doubt that even once we get a native version of cubase/nuendo + kontakt (or just kontakt, inside logic) that there will be significant performance increases for disk read and write actions within kontakt" combined with claims that even in new computers which can read data at 7+ gb /second, Kontakt still reads samples @ only 150 megabytes/sec.

A main issue for many of us is that in many countries, it takes a month or two from someone orders a M1 Max MacBook Pro until it arrives. Therefore, due to the secrecy about what we can expect from a new, AS compatible Kontakt version, some of us wait with ordering an Apple Silicon Mac. What if eg. this statement from @colony nofi is true "All the testing was done when loading samples at the point when you load a project. It doesn't do them concurrently. The figures we got were the ACTUAL speeds reported while the nuendo projects were loading. The 150MB/s is the total speed. Not times 50." (This was a response to a question about whether each of the Kontakt instances would read samples @ 150mb/Sec, or if the total load time for all Kontakt instances in a project would load data @ 150 mb/sec only.)

I understand that companies like NI sometimes need to maintain a high level of secrecy, but I doubt that NI would lose any customers, sales or any trust from their users if you would have posted anything about these matters – especially since NI now have shared that an Apple Silicon version of Kontakt probably will be released in February.

It has also been mentioned that Sine already read samples at 1 tb/sec. I have many Kontakt libraries, and have no desire for charging my system with 6-7 different sample players. It would be great if NI could share some info about what we can expect from the next Kontakt version.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 20, 2022)

Vik said:


> It has also been mentioned that Sine already read samples at 1 tb/sec.


This is kinda misleading. Because those very high SSD speeds are _sequential read speeds_ (and they are not tb/s but gb/s), meaning if the sectors you're reading are literally next to each other on the drive.

In direct-from-disk streaming scenario, that is practically never the case once you start playing polyphonically, so what you need to look at is _random read speeds_, and they are definitely not in the gb/sec realm.

Then, there's the concept of "queue depth" in SSDs, basically the larger the queue is, the faster SSD reads data. This is not a thing with regular old rust drives (they have "queue depth" of 1), so Kontakt will work like that. When you do SSD benchmarks (i.e. CrystalDiskMark) you will see random read 4K/QD1 and random read 4K/QD32. QD32 is where SSDs perform best. QD1 is how Kontakt will perform. DFD code would need to be deeply overhauled in order to support SSDs, and this is extremely tricky business with a lot of pitfalls and potential for bugs and performance issues downstream.

By the way, even if Kontakt reads things at 150 mb/sec (also what is "mb" - is it mega_bit_ or mega_byte_? 8 times the difference!), that's enough for well over a thousand of stereo voices streamed. Let's do the math: your DFD buffer is set to 18 KB/sec (kilo_byte_). So let's say we're reading at 150 MB (mega_bytes_) per second random read time, that's enough for around 8000 simultaneous DFD requests. They don't necessarily have to belong to all the different voices (certain voices would request next sample chunk faster or slower depending on i.e. repitching of the sample), but that _is_ a lot of throughput there.



Vik said:


> "I personally doubt that even once we get a native version of cubase/nuendo + kontakt (or just kontakt, inside logic) that there will be significant performance increases for disk read and write actions within kontakt"


Yeah, an OS/CPU compatibility update has little to nothing to do with disk streaming code of Kontakt.


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## Alex Fraser (Jan 20, 2022)

PaulieDC said:


> Oooo, what timing, your very well-written post is smack up against mine with two diametrically opposed takes on this. I like it!


Funny - I thought both takes were right on the money actually, describing both contrasting sides of the situation perfectly.

I think NI are smart enough to realise people are going to come at Kontakt from completely different angles. Deep sample code ninjas sure, but also those who don't go beyond the "Play" series.

And I'm just gonna pretend that Charlie didn't dump on EXS24 a little there..


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## Faheem Hasan (Jan 20, 2022)

Vik said:


> A main issue for many of us is that in many countries, it takes a month or two from someone orders a M1 Max MacBook Pro until it arrives. Therefore, due to the secrecy about what we can expect from a new, AS compatible Kontakt version, some of us wait with ordering an Apple Silicon Mac.


Hey Vik, I'm afraid I can't comment on the Read/Write speeds and the rest of those technical aspects.. @EvilDragon seems to have taken a good stab at that already! 

As for M1 compatibility and more clarity around that - This one's on Apple. It's not just us, a whole host of developers across the industry have had to handle the M1 transition, and it's a tough one. Our first challenge was BigSur compatibility and we have managed to solve that fairly well.. M1 is the next challenge and although this may not work out according to your expected timelines, it is in the works. I cannot guarantee when a release is imminent but we (at NI) are very well aware of it's significance to our end users. 

In the meantime though, if you are really looking at having the most compatibility of software for your computer hardware across brands, My personal recommendation would be to go for a previous gen - Intel Mac (used/new).. That way you can be assured of having access to a whole bunch of _working software _that hasn't just been upgraded to M1. Just my two cents.


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## Vik (Jan 20, 2022)

Faheem Hasan said:


> I cannot guarantee when a release is imminent but we (at NI) are very well aware of it's significance to our end users.
> 
> In the meantime though, if you are really looking at having the most compatibility of software for your computer hardware across brands, My personal recommendation would be to go for a previous gen - Intel Mac (used/new)..


Re. the Intel iMac: I'm typing on one right now. The other thing, about my/our 'expected timelines', the reference about a native Apple Silicon version of Kontakt, this comes from Matt @ NI:


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## SergeD (Jan 20, 2022)

I could buy Kontakt as it is now, but I will not.

As a user, apart from the unreadable interface, Kontakt player is quite efficient for my needs. Some libraries are very attractive, but not at the price of buying Kontakt which comes with a ton of stuff I will never use.

So, I'm waiting for the Kontakt Lite version (which will never come) in order to buy only the libraries that I will use.


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## Sarah Mancuso (Jan 20, 2022)

SergeD said:


> I could buy Kontakt as it is now, but I will not.
> 
> As a user, apart from the unreadable interface, Kontakt player is quite efficient for my needs. Some libraries are very attractive, but not at the price of buying Kontakt which comes with a ton of stuff I will never use.
> 
> So, I'm waiting for the Kontakt Lite version (which will never come) in order to buy only the libraries that I will use.


If you own _any_ Kontakt Player library whatsoever, you can crossgrade to Kontakt for $125 during an NI sale. I can't imagine it ever getting cheaper than that.


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## Rudianos (Jan 20, 2022)

Sarah Mancuso said:


> If you own _any_ Kontakt Player library whatsoever, you can crossgrade to Kontakt for $125 during an NI sale. I can't imagine it ever getting cheaper than that.


yes I am amazed after months of 50% off sales people are still talking about having not purchased this yet. Best investment in VI world to date.


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## SergeD (Jan 20, 2022)

Sarah Mancuso said:


> If you own _any_ Kontakt Player library whatsoever, you can crossgrade to Kontakt for $125 during an NI sale. I can't imagine it ever getting cheaper than that.


I can even afford it at full price, no problem, but it's not about the price, it's about paying for something you don't need, philosophic matter, nothing more 

Then, is that sampler alone worth 125$? Not for a hobbyist like me. Is any good library on Kontakt player worth to be bought? Yes, anytime.


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## homie (Jan 20, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> • As others have pointed out, Kontakt is a *sampler* - and an amazingly powerful one at that.


True, but last time (many years ago) i tried to use Kontakt as a loop slicer i found the small GUI and general UI/UX hard to work with.

That's one of the main reasons for me wondering about the future of Kontakt. They had many years and millions of bucks but decided to invest in whatever. It's clear for a long time that things like VST3 versions and scalable GUIs are very important. Ignoring such topics for so long looks like mismanagement to me. Their lack of communication isn't helping either. I mean i want them to succeed, but lost confidence in it.


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## homie (Jan 20, 2022)

SergeD said:


> Then, is that sampler alone worth 125$? Not for a hobbyist like me. Is any good library on Kontakt player worth to be bought? Yes, anytime.


Kontakt alone would probably be the same price whether the factory library is included or not. NI's pricing is not their biggest problem IMO.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 20, 2022)

homie said:


> True, but last time (many years ago) i tried to use Kontakt as a loop slicer i found the small GUI and general UI/UX hard to work with.



Unsure if this would apply for your use case, but in Kontakt standalone you can pop out the Mapping and Wave Editors into separate windows, which can then be resized (top left corner).

In fact, you can even do a tweak in registry/plist to change these preset sizes, to a maximum of 1024 px of height. Which gives you this:







Plenty of space for slicing, I'd say! But yeah if you need this in a DAW, then it's a no go.


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## el-bo (Jan 20, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Unsure if this would apply for your use case, but in Kontakt standalone you can pop out the Mapping and Wave Editors into separate windows, which can then be resized (top left corner).
> 
> In fact, you can even do a tweak in registry/plist to change these preset sizes, to a maximum of 1024 px of height. Which gives you this:
> 
> ...


That's a great tip!


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## PaulieDC (Jan 20, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Hahah yeah perfect timing indeed! As much as it sounds like I'm defending Kontakt or trying to make a good case for its survival, I'm trying to think of it from NI's perspective, and whether or not THEY think it's worth the hassle of keeping it current and viable - not whether we (the old farts who still reminisce about Akai S-1000's and SyQuest drives) or the young guns (who don't give a crap about user sampling and just want to make beats using LoopCloud or Arcade) think it's viable.
> 
> As I have stated ad nauseam, it's EXS24 / Sampler that does 99% of the heavy lifting for me, and I barely even use Kontakt except as a portal to buying+exporting WAVs for use in EXS, or as a way to access locked-down legato-transition libraries. But I recognize that it's a beast, even if I prefer to use a simpler solution like EXS.
> 
> ...


And here's the thing: it's an EXTREMELY important program for content producers so even if the end user honeymoon fades a bit, NI still has the pro user base to support. Like you and others said, there's no other sampler out there like this, the other stuff are just players. FWIW, I don't want to see it fade even though I don't use it heavily. It would be like Fender not making guitars any longer, too big of a loss of a staple in our world. In fact, I hope I'm wrong!


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## el-bo (Jan 20, 2022)




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## homie (Jan 20, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Unsure if this would apply for your use case, but in Kontakt standalone you can pop out the Mapping and Wave Editors into separate windows, which can then be resized (top left corner).


Good tip, thank you very much. But that's unfortunately not a solution for my workflow. Probably useful during development though.

The more i think about it the more sad i get about this. I mean what were they waiting for all those years? The Kontakt GUI is totally outdated. It doesn't make sense to say it's our cashcow and let it rot at the same time.


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## Nico5 (Jan 20, 2022)

Pianolando said:


> EDIT: as Ivan points out, a real competitor would be great to accelerate progress. Right now there isn't any real alternative.



There are already several alternatives with at least partially superior functionality - including the aforementioned Falcon, but also platforms like HALion and MSoundFactory. And there are several simpler and less expensive platforms including Hyperion, Unify, TX16Wx, HISE, sforzando, Decent Sampler and such.

And I have the funny feeling, that Native Instruments is keenly aware of what advantages some of those alternatives bring to the table, and that's why they've been improving Kontakt more aggressively over the last little while, compared to a few years ago. It's probably not an accident, that it's already VST3 capable, while quite a few of the other NI instruments aren't (yet).


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## EvilDragon (Jan 20, 2022)

homie said:


> It doesn't make sense to say it's our cashcow and let it rot at the same time.


Tech debt is a real thing that can happen.


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## homie (Jan 20, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Tech debt is a real thing that can happen.


Absolutely, but it's no rocket science either. I can't accept that as the main reason. Sorry, no.

I don't want to hurt anyone, but it looks like they hired too many incompetent people and lost the plot. It's sad, but that's the most probable explanation for being behind the curve that much while having more resources than most competitors.


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## homie (Jan 20, 2022)

My second favorite NI plugin is Battery. Sadly the same story as Kontakt. Why no further development to make it perfect? How about a nice loop slicer? When i discovered how round robin is implemented i couldn't belief it. One has to involve multiple cells in order to get it working which clutters the grid in an highly undesirable way. The GUI is (of course) not scalable either.


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## StefanoM (Jan 20, 2022)

Kontakt is a Sampler, it is a development environment for developers, and.... it is a very powerful sound design tool. 3 in 1

There is currently no comparison with the proprietary players who are born to do 1 thing strictly "closed".


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## colony nofi (Jan 20, 2022)

homie said:


> Absolutely, but it's no rocket science either. I can't accept that as the main reason. Sorry, no.
> 
> I don't want to hurt anyone, but it looks like they hired too many incompetent people and lost the plot. It's sad, but that's the most probable explanation for being behind the curve that much while having more resources than most competitors.


oh man there's so much wrong with this that it hurts.
The folk that work at NI are a bloody brilliant set of brains. 

(fwiw I've seen awesome dev teams on terrible old products - that doesn't mean the terrible product can easily be made less terrible quickly... and kontakt isn't terrible)

There's no plot lost. Perhaps their goals don't align with yours. That's ok - but it doesn't mean that theres incompetence involved. Its not the most probably explanation at all - and I'm not even getting into an argument of being behind the curve.

You need to look at what kontakt is, who it is used by, who is now buying it new, the other companies it supports (there's still a tonne of kontakt only devs out there, even as some of the big boys make their own sample players)

I kinda hear that you're frustrated that kontakt isn't heading in a direction that you personally would like to see it head. And I get that. There's plenty of things about kontakt and new features that I think are mis-guided. But I don't have the data about their users that they do. And I do know that they take their user base VERY seriously. 

I have been behind the scenes with some of the large DAW software co's They are weighing up a bunch of different considerations ALL the time, and a tonne of them really blew my mind the first time I was privy to them. They have their own directions that they follow. And the different companies have different goals / ethos / company values that also impact it.

Edit : I suspect you vastly underestimate the complexity of software that has old roots. Maintaining compatibility across versions is a massive undertaking. There is code from a decade ago and more in many of these products. There is no easy solution to this. You can't easily re-write a million lines of code. Costs and resources and returns are weighed against much else. I cannot speak for NI at all, but I would imagine that NI would rather build a new gen sampler from scratch than try and re-write kontakt with more modern programming ethos that still maintained 100% compatibility.


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## SergeD (Jan 20, 2022)

homie said:


> NI's pricing is not their biggest problem IMO.


Okay, let's do the math. Does a developer have to pay a royalty to NI for each product sold? 

If not, knowing that more and more free romplers (EW, UVI, etc.) emerge, then, from now to 5 years, will Kontakt remain attractive for developers? If not, that means people will buy non Kontakt products and NI will still have to support multiple third party libraries. Then, will Kontakt still be viable?


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## Cdnalsi (Jan 20, 2022)

The only thing that's keeping me tied to Kontakt is MM-Bass. I haven't played a better electric bass library. I've tried Trillian, Modo Bass, stuff from Ample Sound, none of them cut through the mix and have the playability of the Scarbee to my hands. 

I wish I could get rid of Kontakt. Can anyone recommend an electric bass library?


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## EvilDragon (Jan 20, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> oh man there's so much wrong with this that it hurts.
> The folk that work at NI are a bloody brilliant set of brains.
> 
> (fwiw I've seen awesome dev teams on terrible old products - that doesn't mean the terrible product can easily be made less terrible quickly... and kontakt isn't terrible)
> ...



You've said it better than I ever could have.



SergeD said:


> If not, knowing that more and more free romplers (EW, UVI, etc.) emerge, then, from now to 5 years, will Kontakt remain attractive for developers?


Yes because it has the widest market spread, and is not a closed environment to 3rd parties (neither is UVI, but it has 100x less market reach).


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## tc9000 (Jan 20, 2022)

I _love_ Kontakt. I don't use the other NI stuff very much, but when I'm writing, the vast amount of tracks I'm adding are Kontakt libs created by third party devs. NI made the walled garden and the devs came and built stuff. Please, pretty please, with sugar on top, NI please keep attracting those third party devs.


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## rezoneight (Jan 20, 2022)

Vik said:


> Re. the Intel iMac: I'm typing on one right now. The other thing, about my/our 'expected timelines', the reference about a native Apple Silicon version of Kontakt, this comes from Matt @ NI:


"Apple Silicon compatibility" doesn't equate to native Apple Silicon code. They already have some other products that have compatibility via Rosetta 2 so that statement could very well mean Kontakt running on M1 via Rosetta 2.


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## Mistro (Jan 20, 2022)

At first I wanted Kontakt because I kept finding instruments I wanted that required it. But what really sold me on getting it was the fact it's a powerful creative tool on top of all the great instruments being made for/with it. I was able to make my own instrument to musically add sound effects to a song in no time for example...scratching the surface is an understatement. Perhaps many people forget that it's a sampler and you can make your own plugins from scratch with anything you can put in front of a microphone. The creative side of Kontakt alone is enough to give it a seriously long life.


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## Trevor Meier (Jan 20, 2022)

Tech debt is real. It doesn’t change the strategic paradigm. “Buy an Intel Mac” and “launch in standalone and edit a plist file” aren’t reasonable answers in a market where there’s choice. NI’s played a dangerous game letting interest accumulate on their tech debt.


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## chocobitz825 (Jan 20, 2022)

I rarely use Kontakt these days....

that's all. not the end of Kontakt, or some complaints about what it can or cant do, or should or shouldn't be doing. I use it when I need to, don't when I don't. I don't lose any sleep over what happens in NI world otherwise.


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## jcrosby (Jan 20, 2022)

rezoneight said:


> "Apple Silicon compatibility" doesn't equate to native Apple Silicon code. They already have some other products that have compatibility via Rosetta 2 so that statement could very well mean Kontakt running on M1 via Rosetta 2.


It is native support, and it's in beta as we speak for Kontakt 6.7. Read through the post there are a number of responses from NI that clearly state as much. Also see the thread where ED confirms as much.










Native Instruments Apple Silicon M1 Compatibility


Apple began transitioning its Mac lineup from Intel processors to its own Apple silicon M1, their new generation of processors, in late 2020.




community.native-instruments.com





*Q:*
_Thanks for your reply. By Apple Silicon "compatibility" are you implying that Kontakt 6.7 will run natively or via Rosetta 2?_

*A:*
_Kontakt is already working via Rosetta 2, so by Apple Silicon compatibility we mean it will run natively._







Kontakt Native Support for M1/M1 Pro+Max


Does anyone know if NI plans on updating their software to support M1 chips natively instead of using Rosetta? I’m sure than many of us would see a pretty significant performance boost if they did. Just curious. Thanks, Cody




vi-control.net


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## jcrosby (Jan 20, 2022)

Faheem Hasan said:


> Hello all, I'm Faheem, Product Manager for the NKS Ecosystem at Native, and I'd like to jump in here to clear the air around these rumours that have sprung up about us not supporting KONTAKT anymore. While my statement here may not be an "official" press release statement from NI's end, you can be rest assured that these rumours and FUD are not based on fact. As @Mike Greene very well mentioned in a previous reply here, KONTAKT is a very important component of our business model, both for our own business as well as for all of the 3rd Party businesses that are part of our NKS & KONTAKT Player Ecosystem.
> 
> We are continuously developing the KONTAKT Platform and evolving it to suit the needs of modern music makers. Rest assured, there are no plans underway to "kill" KONTAKT in any way. We are very much committed to ensuring it's survival for the sake of our Partners, our dedicated and loyal customers, and of course, for our own sake as well
> 
> ...


I just want to say thanks for taking the time to come here and dispel any rumors. Great news, and nice to know you guys keep tabs on the forum here... It's also nice to hear that NI doesn't discourage existing developers from branching out and doing their own thing. Clearly the reasons for the uptick in new proprietary players is driven by other motives than the rumor that kicked this thread off...


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## Nico5 (Jan 20, 2022)

Cdnalsi said:


> Can anyone recommend an electric bass library?


I'm surprised you couldn't find anything from Trilian to work for you. -- I find it a very rich environment for bass.


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## moon (Jan 20, 2022)

Cdnalsi said:


> The only thing that's keeping me tied to Kontakt is MM-Bass. I haven't played a better electric bass library. I've tried Trillian, Modo Bass, stuff from Ample Sound, none of them cut through the mix and have the playability of the Scarbee to my hands.
> 
> I wish I could get rid of Kontakt. Can anyone recommend an electric bass library?


Maybe give the Premier Sound Factory stuff a try? Or the Orange Tree Samples basses.


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## Rudianos (Jan 20, 2022)

Cdnalsi said:


> The only thing that's keeping me tied to Kontakt is MM-Bass. I haven't played a better electric bass library. I've tried Trillian, Modo Bass, stuff from Ample Sound, none of them cut through the mix and have the playability of the Scarbee to my hands.
> 
> I wish I could get rid of Kontakt. Can anyone recommend an electric bass library?








Bass







www.ilyaefimov.com





Efimov puts out some fine basses picked them up in a bundle for low $100s for Xmas


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## Rudianos (Jan 20, 2022)

Cdnalsi said:


> The only thing that's keeping me tied to Kontakt is MM-Bass. I haven't played a better electric bass library. I've tried Trillian, Modo Bass, stuff from Ample Sound, none of them cut through the mix and have the playability of the Scarbee to my hands.
> 
> I wish I could get rid of Kontakt. Can anyone recommend an electric bass library?


And Prominy worth a look






SR5 Rock Bass 2 | Products | Prominy







prominy.com





Don't ditch Kontakt


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## easyrider (Jan 20, 2022)

I suffer from Kontakt upgrade anxiety…..my lasts version took 3 seconds to load….updated to latest takes about 30 seconds WTF….


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## PaulieDC (Jan 20, 2022)

Mistro said:


> ...Perhaps many people forget that it's a sampler and you can make your own plugins from scratch with anything you can put in front of a microphone...


Spot on. And to add to that, many people just don't _know_. A good number might not ever know because we are now in a glut of library choices, we get consumed in that extensively. I guess that was the point I was making yesterday, I don't think it will be strange in the future for musicians/composers to say "why would I want to sample my own instruments?". Just a thought.


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## PaulieDC (Jan 20, 2022)

easyrider said:


> I suffer from Kontakt upgrade anxiety…..my lasts version took 3 seconds to load….updated to latest takes about 30 seconds WTF….


Does it speed up after the initial load? Maybe the first loads caches stuff, then once you've done that, it's back to normal.


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## easyrider (Jan 20, 2022)

PaulieDC said:


> Does it speed up after the initial load? Maybe the first loads caches stuff, then once you've done that, it's back to normal.



No…it’s the same every time I use it…

This was in October before I updated….





Why does Kontakt first instance take 45 seconds to load?


Any idea why the first instantiation of Kontakt takes a solid 45 seconds to load? ••• EDIT = SOLUTION FOUND! See post #83 for the answer (hint = it's .plist files) ••• - If there are no other instances of Kontakt loaded, the first instance of either v5 or v6 of Kontakt takes exactly 40 seconds...




vi-control.net






Now it’s ten times slower….


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## el-bo (Jan 21, 2022)

PaulieDC said:


> don't think it will be strange in the future for musicians/composers to say "why would I want to sample my own instruments?". Just a thought.


I think the growth of Pianobook hints that there will always be a tradition of DIY in the music world.


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## GtrString (Jan 21, 2022)

NI has a history of abandoning their older products, so eventually I would assume that will happen. Not likely anytime soon, though, considering the number of users. But developers are creating their own players, and that probably accelerates the process of NI not caring.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 21, 2022)

Accelerates _which_ process? Of abandoning Kontakt? Nope, that is not true at all.


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## charlieclouser (Jan 21, 2022)

easyrider said:


> I suffer from Kontakt upgrade anxiety…..my lasts version took 3 seconds to load….updated to latest takes about 30 seconds WTF….


I went through this too - loading the first empty instance of Kontakt into a Logic project took 45 seconds! Once the first instance was loaded, subsequent instances took 2 seconds. (I'm on MacOS Mojave by the way).

The issue turned out to be the .plist files that are created - one for each of the zillions of products in Komplete, and one for every Kontakt Player library. The ones for the Player libraries need to be left where they are (or else those libraries will show as not authorized) but the other zillions can be moved to a safe location outside the folder where they reside.

It may be an issue with permissions on the folder in which the .plist files are located, haven't gotten completely to the bottom of the issue yet. But here's the thread I made to discuss the issue, and my interim solution is on post #83:






Why does Kontakt first instance take 45 seconds to load?


The NI ones need to stay: I pretty much trashed anything that looked out of place such as synths or clearly not Kontakt-related, like as you say, Waves. I think all the NKS files are in User/Library/Prefs. The authorisation files have moved around a bit over the years but I think at least some...




vi-control.net


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## easyrider (Jan 21, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I went through this too - loading the first empty instance of Kontakt into a Logic project took 45 seconds! Once the first instance was loaded, subsequent instances took 2 seconds. (I'm on MacOS Mojave by the way).
> 
> The issue turned out to be the .plist files that are created - one for each of the zillions of products in Komplete, and one for every Kontakt Player library. The ones for the Player libraries need to be left where they are (or else those libraries will show as not authorized) but the other zillions can be moved to a safe location outside the folder where they reside.
> 
> ...



I’ll check it out cheers mate. 👍

Updates should improve the user experience not break stuff..


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## meradium (Jan 21, 2022)

Lee Blaske said:


> Obviously, even if all the other developers depart, Kontakt will still be used for all of NI's products (as their proprietary player). That's a pretty vast range of content. So, Kontakt isn't going anywhere.
> 
> I do wonder, though, about the viability of NKS, if it only runs on NI hardware. I struggled with an S88, and then an S88 MkII. The interface stuff is nice, but those keyboards aren't professional grade in any way shape or form. Horrible Fatar actions.


Fatar actions —> Like 99% of keyboards out there?


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## meradium (Jan 21, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> oh man there's so much wrong with this that it hurts.
> The folk that work at NI are a bloody brilliant set of brains.
> 
> (fwiw I've seen awesome dev teams on terrible old products - that doesn't mean the terrible product can easily be made less terrible quickly... and kontakt isn't terrible)
> ...


On the mark!


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## liquidlino (Jan 21, 2022)

PaulieDC said:


> Just consider a couple things before we all laugh at the wolf blowing on the brick house. Kontakt is software, very good, very complex and that means _nothing_ unless you have an audience. It will not be around forever because the ecosystem is changing. Before you blast me, hear me out: I'm old, but I'm new to MIDI Orchestration. There are a plethora of new young guns arising who have zero emotional attachment to the long fruitful journey that many of the seasoned pros and longtime members have on this forum with Kontakt. That includes me. I'm thrilled that I now can use Synchron and SINE and the Spitfire Player. I develop software, I know these apps will improve and I'm fine with that. The Kontakt UI is not great, it's a mass of a bazillion amazing choices that requires mouse clicks galore, along with archaic navigation like Play (that's subjective, you may love it). But the upcoming new generation is seeing Spitfire and even OT be really involved in offering GREAT libraries plus a plethora of low cost and freebies, plus the enormous social presence with walkthroughs and tutorials galore, straight from the owners. Tthat's what's going to capture the attention of the incoming and upcoming crew and the need for Kontakt will dwindle due to market-share. But wait, Kontakt lets you build sample libraries, right? With all that has emerged in the last 8 years as far as choices out there, how much of a consumer base will there be for making your own stuff? I may be way off but I believe the trend is heading over to the completed library side, and the uncountable amount of music pieces being shown and played on social media is being consumed by the up and coming who are hearing about these newer companies, so that's all they know. When the experienced composers were going through the development of all of this from floppies to GigaSampler to Kontakt, it's all you knew and there wasn't a mass distribution of that experience on our Motorola flip phones.
> 
> There's a lot of great stuff out there now. Expensive and complex will start to fade. Are recording studios the mecca of all music now, or are we home working successfully in the box? The next wave of composers aren't going to know the journey nor see the need. In fact, the millennial generation has done a couple things I absolutely love... the whole car buying process that will never go away? Ha, they ditched that and now we have Carvana and others like it. Real Estate insanity and expensive realtor fees? See ya! Hello OfferPad.
> 
> ...


This is spot on. I'm new to orchestral too. I have no plans to buy full kontakt or Komplete. It's not necessary for the big libraries and I can also see that all the big developers are shifting to their own vsts. Nothing wrong with Kontakt, but it's clear the writing is on the wall for it for the big guns.


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## chopin4525 (Jan 21, 2022)

meradium said:


> Fatar actions —> Like 99% of keyboards out there?


Every manufacturer does their own adjustments and calibrations. Depending on this work the difference can be huge despite still using the same action.


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## Cdnalsi (Jan 21, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> I'm surprised you couldn't find anything from Trilian to work for you. -- I find it a very rich environment for bass.


I was surprised as well. T.H. Skarbye created something truly special. Trillian just felt so unnatural compared.



moon said:


> Maybe give the Premier Sound Factory stuff a try? Or the Orange Tree Samples basses.


Thanks, these are both Kontakt libraries. The point was to not use Kontakt anymore.



Rudianos said:


> Don't ditch Kontakt


I can't right now anyways. Perhaps their M1 native update will solve everything. Also thanks for your recommendations.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 21, 2022)

Maybe also check out ISW Precision and/or Abyss basses.


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## Cdnalsi (Jan 21, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Maybe also check out ISW Precision and/or Abyss basses.


Thanks, unfortunately those didn't sound good at all.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 21, 2022)

Maybe not what you were looking for then, but feedback for them was generally great...


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## homie (Jan 21, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> Edit : I suspect you vastly underestimate the complexity of software that has old roots.


Sorry, i don't. I've enough software development and general work experience to assess things like this myself. I know coding is hard and it's possibly not even the fault of the coders left at NI. When your main cash cow looks like something that was built 20 years ago and doesn't support modern standards you did something wrong. Finding excuses doesn't really help.


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## homie (Jan 21, 2022)

Let's split Kontakt in three parts for simplification. The audio engine, the internal GUI and the libraries. The audio engine seems to work fine. The internal GUI (UI/UX) is outdated. Libraries and their GUIs vary in quality depending on creation date and/or skills of the respective developer. What i'm saying is there is no good reason to neglect the internal GUI, even if it is just held together by inline hacks or general spaghetti code (which i've a hard time believing that's the case here) for far too long. Steinberg for example has a very similar tech debt problem but is actually working an their GUI, at least in most important parts.


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## porrasm (Jan 21, 2022)

I sure hope it will stay relevant. The proprietary players rarely offer anything with the added pain of using a different plugin.


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## babylonwaves (Jan 21, 2022)

homie said:


> I don't want to hurt anyone, but it looks like they hired too many incompetent people and lost the plot.


i don't think you need to call people incompetent - you don't even know them, goals, restrains, priorities and all that. apparently you can't even accept technical debt as a reason for the issues discussed. other might find that a bit incompetent as well (but for a reason)


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## Vik (Jan 21, 2022)

I hope Kontakt will be around forever – and so far, there are AFAIK no other companies that has released a platform like Kontakt: one which allows other developers to use their own sampler/sample player.

But Light & Sound seems to be working on a solution that also can be used by other developers. Not only that, but many companies now are working on solutions which will make them independent of Kontakt the future. This, combined with the fact that Kontakt has three weak areas (releasing minor updates through Kontakt means delays, several claim that releasing stuff through Kontakt causes too high expenses, the development seems slow because they have so many own products to update) could mean that NI would lose a lot of income since major developers like Spitfire and Orhcestral Tools (and several others) at some point won't keep funding NI's development. That is, IMO, the real elephant in the room – if there is any.


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## doctoremmet (Jan 21, 2022)

Vik said:


> one which allows other developers to use their own sampler/sample player.


Well, there are UVI Falcon and Steinberg Halion. And MSoundFactory. And HISE. So this is not entirely true.


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## Vik (Jan 21, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> Well, there are UVI Falcon and Steinberg Halion. And MSoundFactory. And HISE. So this is not entirely true.


Agree, except that it was true, until now, that _AFAIK_ there are no other companies that.....


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## Trash Panda (Jan 21, 2022)

homie said:


> Sorry, i don't. I've enough software development and general work experience to assess things like this myself. I know coding is hard and it's possibly not even the fault of the coders left at NI. When your main cash cow looks like something that was built 20 years ago and doesn't support modern standards you did something wrong. Finding excuses doesn't really help.


So you have enough software development experience to “assess how these things work” but don’t seem to grasp how product decisions are made?


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## doctoremmet (Jan 21, 2022)

Vik said:


> Agree, except that it was true, until now, that _AFAIK_ there are no other companies that.....


Gotcha. I just wanted to throw these options out there. Some alternatives are actually pretty good. But the developers / solutions are either not really interested in challenging Kontakt (UVI) or are not universally loved enough to be able to (Halion). This last sentence is just a personal opinion


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## Vik (Jan 21, 2022)

Plus, with 6 libraries that all can be used by other developers, the whole situation becomes more confusing, and could easily result that Kontakt will be the dominating 'universal' sampler for many years to come – unless one of the others soon will stick out as clearly better.


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## homie (Jan 21, 2022)

Some people seem to have trouble accepting that incompetent people are real. Bad decisions are made all the time right before our eyes. Shooting the messenger doesn't help either. I'm not saying i'm better or more compentent.

ps I'm incompentent at speaking proper english, for example.


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## Trash Panda (Jan 21, 2022)

homie said:


> Some people seem to have trouble accepting that incompetent people are real. Bad decisions are made all the time right before our eyes. Shooting the messenger doesn't help either. I'm not saying i'm better or more compentent.
> 
> ps I'm incompentent at speaking proper english, for example.


I believe incompetent people are real. They oftentimes come into Internet forums with authoritative voices about how software companies make product decisions.


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## colony nofi (Jan 21, 2022)

One final little thought… a thought tangent even…

It’s worth taking a breath and looking at how the markets for music making have exploded over the last 20 years. And in the last 5 how far sample library development has come. 
There’s good market reasons behind the costs of libraries these days compared to the $ one sunk even 15 years ago. Some of this is driven by pros and some by non-pro. The amount of people using what many of us would consider pro equipment in their bedrooms is astounding - to me at least. 

The little I do know of the audio creation markets (and then software instrument markets) tells me there’s a tonne I don’t know, but the market is not as straight forward as perhaps I may have used to think… and the decision making processes of companies playing in these markets are incredibly involved. They don’t make decisions like I ever would, and that’s ok! They all make decisions differently of course. Some will make mistakes. What we claim is incompetence is often ascribed in retrospect with the benefit of hindsight. What we claim as good directions for a company is made with thick black curtains covering our view. 

Different companies have different slices of the market. They ebb and flow. They come and go. NI is one of those companies. 

But I cannot see any incompetence of the company from my limited viewpoint.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 21, 2022)

homie said:


> even if it is just held together by inline hacks or general spaghetti code (which i've a hard time believing that's the case here)


It kinda is. 

Kontakt is using a 20 years old homebrew UI toolkit. Reaktor is, too.


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## Nico5 (Jan 21, 2022)

homie said:


> Some people seem to have trouble accepting that incompetent people are real.



Even very good people can get caught in the squeeze of more supply than demand.


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## PaulieDC (Jan 21, 2022)

el-bo said:


> I think the growth of Pianobook hints that there will always be a tradition of DIY in the music world.


Fair point!


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## kitekrazy (Jan 22, 2022)

A week doesn't go by without some developer creating a Kontakt library. One of the reason why it lasts this long is most of the time it works. Isn't the advantage of developing for Kontakt player is the library is hosted on a NI server.
The sad thing is most of us use it as a rompler. Try making your own library in Live's sampler or Reason NN-XT and Kontakt blows them away. Those samplers have never been updated either.


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## Mike Greene (Jan 22, 2022)

kitekrazy said:


> Isn't the advantage of developing for Kontakt player is the library is hosted on a NI server.


That's only _some_ libraries, since NA hosting is an option (not requirement) and it costs extra.

NA hosting has its advantages, and I opted to pay for it, but there's a downside, too, as they seem to _still_ have a security issue, and some libraries (like Screaming Trumpet a couple months ago) get pirated before they're even released. So in my case, we're holding off on exactly how we'll handle the next release.


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## kitekrazy (Jan 22, 2022)

Mike Greene said:


> That's only _some_ libraries, since it's an option (not requirement) and it costs extra.
> 
> NA hosting has its advantages, and I opted to pay for it, but there's a downside, too, as they seem to _still_ have a security issue, and some libraries (like Screaming Trumpet a couple months ago) get pirated before they're even released. So in my case, we're holding off on exactly how we'll handle the next release.


You have to wonder if it;s an insider doing this.


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## LamaRose (Jan 22, 2022)

When the times comes, I'll volunteer to put K down... quick and humanely. But Native Access deserves a good, old fashioned flaying.


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## musicsoftwaredeals (Jan 22, 2022)

Mike Greene said:


> That's only _some_ libraries, since it's an option (not requirement) and it costs extra.
> 
> NA hosting has its advantages, and I opted to pay for it, but there's a downside, too, as they seem to _still_ have a security issue, and some libraries (like Screaming Trumpet a couple months ago) get pirated before they're even released. So in my case, we're holding off on exactly how we'll handle the next release.


Your product was pirated before it was even released? That's crazy....


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## robgb (Jan 22, 2022)

Kontakt isn't going anywhere. They are still actively developing it.


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## robgb (Jan 22, 2022)

clisma said:


> Except that Kontakt is actually a SAMPLER (Ok ok, without an input, fine.) Unlike the PLAYERS/ROMPLERS being released by these companies.


Bingo. Full Kontakt allows you to do a multitude of things that these other players don't and never will. This is why I love Kontakt. You can either plug-n-play or you can tweak to your heart's content. With these new romplers you can't tweak much of anything and that's a real problem for me.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jan 22, 2022)

liquidlino said:


> This is spot on. I'm new to orchestral too. I have no plans to buy full kontakt or Komplete. It's not necessary for the big libraries and I can also see that all the big developers are shifting to their own vsts. Nothing wrong with Kontakt, but it's clear the writing is on the wall for it for the big guns.


If you don't own full Kontakt, you might not be aware of how _powerful_ or _educational_ it can be. By spending time under the hood, I've been able to to learn more and more about how libraries are put together, and how they work.

It's a lot of little stuff that really adds up. Like being able to see which notes are stretched, seeing how developers label the samples (notably the dynamic markings and articulation names). Knowing how many dynamic layers and at what cc on the modwheel they crossfade. And having control over ADSR (right now I'm frustrated that SFA player doesn't give enough control of that). Being able to re-time and re-pitch. Or remap.

Third party players are opaque, and so in the future this information will be lost. Legato transitions might be more of a vague magical thing in the future if you aren't able to go under the hood and access the original recordings in isolation, and see how they were performed, then cut up, then crossfaded.

There's really a ton of stuff that allows you to understand the strengths of the instrument, and to modify it to help you get the most from your instrument, or fit them within your workflow.

As a result, you don't have to continually buy new stuff, because you'll be able to squeeze more out of what you already have.


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## robgb (Jan 22, 2022)

SergeD said:


> I can even afford it at full price, no problem, but it's not about the price, it's about paying for something you don't need, philosophic matter, nothing more


If it's something you don't need, why are you even part of this discussion? It seems to me it would be irrelevant to you. For those who choose to use Kontakt, it is the best and most reliable sample player and creation tool currently on the market. It really has no equal. If you're happy being restricted to romplers and Kontakt player libraries, then that's your choice. But many of us (if not most) want more and Kontakt offers that.


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## robgb (Jan 22, 2022)

homie said:


> The more i think about it the more sad i get about this. I mean what were they waiting for all those years? The Kontakt GUI is totally outdated.


I really don't get comments like this. Because it doesn't suit "your" workflow it's outdated? I like the fact that the GUI hasn't changed drastically because I know my way around it. The GUI is extremely functional. Pardon my annoyance, but I just don't understand the Kontakt bashing when it happens to be the best sampler on the market, has been for years, and will likely continue to be for years to come.

I also wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone say, "I'm a software coder and..."


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## liquidlino (Jan 22, 2022)

Land of Missing Parts said:


> If you don't own full Kontakt, you might not be aware of how _powerful_ or _educational_ it can be. By spending time under the hood, I've been able to to learn more and more about how libraries are put together, and how they work.
> 
> It's a lot of little stuff that really adds up. Like being able to see which notes are stretched, seeing how developers label the samples (notably the dynamic markings and articulation names). Knowing how many dynamic layers and at what cc on the modwheel they crossfade. And having control over ADSR (right now I'm frustrated that SFA player doesn't give enough control of that). Being able to re-time and re-pitch. Or remap.
> 
> ...


That's some great points. I have falcon, but I don't have any orchestral libraries for falcon, only pianos, synths etc. So no legato patches to study. And, of course, full kontakt means I could buy full kontakt only libraries. Hmm. Well, if a really well priced crossgrade sale happens, maybe....


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## easyrider (Jan 22, 2022)

robgb said:


> Bingo. Full Kontakt allows you to do a multitude of things that these other players don't and never will. This is why I love Kontakt. You can either plug-n-play or you can tweak to your heart's content. With these new romplers you can't tweak much of anything and that's a real problem for me.


I just like stuff to work…and Kontakt updates are sketchy at best…


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## robgb (Jan 22, 2022)

easyrider said:


> I just like stuff to work…and Kontakt updates are sketchy at best…


That is complete and utter nonsense. I've been updating Kontakt regularly since version 2 and have never had a problem.


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## SergeD (Jan 22, 2022)

robgb said:


> If it's something you don't need, why are you even part of this discussion? It seems to me it would be irrelevant to you. For those who choose to use Kontakt, it is the best and most reliable sample player and creation tool currently on the market. It really has no equal. If you're happy being restricted to romplers and Kontakt player libraries, then that's your choice. But many of us (if not most) want more and Kontakt offers that.


I don't want to buy their 30 gigs of samples and prefer to give my money to developers, that's about what I said, nothing related to Kontakt itself. 

And I'm sure that many like me (if not most, if not even more, certainly a lot) would buy an affordable Kontakt Lite version without 30 gigs of samples that will never been used. Sorry for having an opinion


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## easyrider (Jan 22, 2022)

robgb said:


> That is complete and utter nonsense. I've been updating Kontakt regularly since version 2 and have never had a problem.


Just go and have a look at the kontakt thread for stuff getting broken.

So sorry you’re the one talking shite


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## homie (Jan 22, 2022)

robgb said:


> Because it doesn't suit "your" workflow it's outdated?


My worries about the future of Kontakt have nothing to do with "my" workflow. But if you ever used a modern plugin with a scalable GUI to adjust the ergonomics to your needs you should know what i mean.

There are some aspects of software which can more or less factually assessed especially if its your job. There are undeniably bigger tectonic movements in sampler/rompler land for some time and very little (IMO) movement of NI to counter that by reinforcing their market position. (partially by modernizing their GUIs at least)


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## alcorey (Jan 22, 2022)

homie said:


> My worries about the future of Kontakt have nothing to do with "my" workflow. But if you ever used a modern plugin with a scalable GUI to adjust the ergonomics to your needs you should know what i mean.
> 
> There are some aspects of software which can more or less factually assessed especially if its your job. There are undeniably bigger tectonic movements in sampler/rompler land for some time and very little (IMO) movement of NI to counter that by reinforcing their market position.


It's a fact - Worrying never, ever helps or remedies anything, in any situation................




But.................the sky is falling


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## proxima (Jan 22, 2022)

SergeD said:


> I don't want to buy their 30 gigs of samples and prefer to give my money to developers, that's about what I said, nothing related to Kontakt itself.
> 
> And I'm sure that many like me (if not most, if not even more, certainly a lot) would buy an affordable Kontakt Lite version without 30 gigs of samples that will never been used. Sorry for having an opinion


While many will extol the gems in the Kontakt Factory Library, I doubt NI would consider the included libraries worth very much of the Kontakt purchase price. Many of the newer included libraries have been offered free over time as well (e.g in the Kontakt Play series). The libraries are there so that when you buy something you have stuff to try and maybe use, not just an empty sampler.

And, of course, you never need to install the samples. Instead of treating NI stuff as "why should I pay for things I don't want?", it's much better to think "Will I get the value out of what I do use to justify the purchase price?" This goes x100 for Komplete - no one will ever like or use everything in it, but it can still be a fantastic value if you use enough of it. For most of us, Kontakt Full is about some combination of being able to use non-player libraries and the ability to create our own or tweak existing ones on the backend (I'm more in the former camp than the latter, though I'd like to get into sampling more).


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## homie (Jan 22, 2022)

Maybe we should ask Mike to delete this thread. Everybody goes their way and acts like nothing happened.


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## Trash Panda (Jan 22, 2022)

This thread would be right at home in the controversial opinions thread. Good merge candidate IMO. 👍🏻


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## SergeD (Jan 22, 2022)

proxima said:


> While many will extol the gems in the Kontakt Factory Library, I doubt NI would consider the included libraries worth very much of the Kontakt purchase price. Many of the newer included libraries have been offered free over time as well (e.g in the Kontakt Play series). The libraries are there so that when you buy something you have stuff to try and maybe use, not just an empty sampler.
> 
> And, of course, you never need to install the samples. Instead of treating NI stuff as "why should I pay for things I don't want?", it's much better to think "Will I get the value out of what I do use to justify the purchase price?" This goes x100 for Komplete - no one will ever like or use everything in it, but it can still be a fantastic value if you use enough of it. For most of us, Kontakt Full is about some combination of being able to use non-player libraries and the ability to create our own or tweak existing ones on the backend (I'm more in the former camp than the latter, though I'd like to get into sampling more).


You are 100% right and no doubt their samples are of high quality. But over 60's, that's the drama (violins here ), time is against you and then pick only essential stuff for running from A to B is the best choice. Hopefully (woodwinds here ), Kontakt player libraries are still to come.


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## homie (Jan 22, 2022)

I've just defused the thread title.


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## [email protected] (Jan 22, 2022)

About Kontakt:

PROS

A good quality sampler that is open to developers to make their own sample libraries and sell them freely. This is a really big plus, and perhaps makes the cons a bit easier to swallow.

CONS

As basically everyone agrees, the ridiculously small interface. I can understand why the Player version might only need a small window, but for developers???

A library created with a later version cannot be opened in an earlier version. Is that really about the complexity of the software, or essentially a business tactic to try and force people to keep upgrading?

Like most computer companies, their manuals tend to be of limited value to anyone starting out.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that NI is affected by the usual laziness that comes from holding a quasi-monopoly position. Still, that's also the fault of their competitors for not putting up much competition.

PUZZLES

Regarding the last point above, I'm puzzled as to why Steinberg and UVI at least haven't tried to take NI on and become number one. Their underlying technology is certainly good enough, and Halion for example has some better features, as well as a full screen sized interface. Halion also allows for developers to release a 'Player' version of sample libraries with no fees or limitations. UVI keep their operations all locked up so it's hard to know what they're aiming at.

I realise that it is a big challenge trying to maintain a piece of software over a long period while maintaining backwards compatibility. I don't have the expertise to criticise NI too strongly on that front, but I have often wondered why they seem to have no plan whatsoever to gradually phase out the need for KSP programming and incorporating all that functionality into a 'drag and drop' kind of usability. It's like if Microsoft decided decades ago that people would just have to keep using DOS forever, and never bothered with Windows. But of course they had a competitor pushing them hard on that front. I realise it would be hard to do that all at once, but why not start doing it by stages?

Personally I would be happy if NI decided to create a replacement/alternative for Kontakt from scratch that incorporated all that kind of thing. It could be a headache for existing developers, but there's no reason why the existing Kontakt couldn't be maintained indefinitely for the existing libraries. Meanwhile, all developers could benefit from vastly simpler processes when creating new libraries.


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## David Kudell (Jan 22, 2022)

Based on what I read about Kontakt, and how it’s using old code and trying to maintain compatibility with all these old libraries, if I were NI I’d just make a brand new sampler with all new code and all the new bells and whistles. They’d need to keep supporting Kontakt but the new sampler would get all the new features. They would encourage developers to make libraries for the new product, with a built-in store with ala-Carte, and better performance to take advantage of fast SSDs.


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## muziksculp (Jan 22, 2022)

Most likely NI will not be able to make Kontakt a scalable application/plugin. Due to it's ancient coding. They would have done so a while back if that was a possibility, but I really doubt it will ever happen. 

@David Kudell Yes, I think they would be smart to keep Kontakt, since there is a lot depending on it so far, but also go ahead and develop a new Modern Sampler platform, with an ala-carte Purchasing system. This would make so much sense for them, and a good thing for developers that will also benefit from new features they could offer in the new Sampler, and Store/Download System.


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## rrichard63 (Jan 22, 2022)

muziksculp said:


> Most likely NI will not be able to make Kontakt a scalable application/plugin. Due to it's ancient coding. They would have done so a while back if that was a possibility, but I really doubt it will ever happen.



Here's what NI said on page 3 above:



Faheem Hasan said:


> Can’t reveal any details here but yes, we are working on it.


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## muziksculp (Jan 22, 2022)

rrichard63 said:


> Here's what NI said on page 3 above:


I will believe it, when I see it happen. 

Is he one of the NI Development Team ? or .... ?


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## rrichard63 (Jan 22, 2022)

David Kudell said:


> ... if I were NI I’d just make a brand new sampler with all new code and all the new bells and whistles. They’d need to keep supporting Kontakt but the new sampler would get all the new features. They would encourage developers to make libraries for the new product, with a built-in store with ala-Carte, and better performance to take advantage of fast SSDs.


I think the feasibility of this approach depends on how easy/hard it would be for developers to move their existing libraries to the new platform. The larger ones, at least, would want to do that. If NI could provide developers with translation tools, that would help.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 22, 2022)

[email protected] said:


> A library created with a later version cannot be opened in an earlier version. Is that really about the complexity of the software, or essentially a business tactic to try and force people to keep upgrading?



It's just basic logic. How can an older version know about any new stuff from a newer version? Any new effects, potentially a newer modulator, or even better - whole new scripting language commands? It just cannot work, you get broken shit if you try that anyways. So it's better not doing it at all.


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## rrichard63 (Jan 22, 2022)

muziksculp said:


> Is he one of the NI Development Team ? or .... ?


He said



Faheem Hasan said:


> Hello all, I'm Faheem, Product Manager for the NKS Ecosystem at Native ...


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## EvilDragon (Jan 22, 2022)

[email protected] said:


> Halion for example has some better features, as well as a full screen sized interface.


...and ridiculously *small, obtuse and not resizable *buttons in a number of places on the interface!










This is NOT better.




[email protected] said:


> but I have often wondered why they seem to have no plan whatsoever to gradually phase out the need for KSP programming and incorporating all that functionality into a 'drag and drop' kind of usability.


Because you cannot replace everything you can do with scripting with mere drag&drop actions.


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## muziksculp (Jan 22, 2022)

rrichard63 said:


> He said


OK. I didn't see that post. 

Thanks


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## EvilDragon (Jan 22, 2022)

muziksculp said:


> Most likely NI will not be able to make Kontakt a scalable application/plugin. Due to it's ancient coding. They would have done so a while back if that was a possibility, but I really doubt it will ever happen.


Ancient code doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done about it. It just means it takes more time to do the right thing in the right way.


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## muziksculp (Jan 22, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Ancient code doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done about it. It just means it takes more time to do the right thing in the right way.


Yes, I know. But I might be in a senior citizen retirement home when Kontakt is finally scalable ? 

So, *time* does matter !


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## Trash Panda (Jan 22, 2022)

muziksculp said:


> Yes, I know. But I might be in a senior citizen retirement home when Kontakt is finally scalable ?
> 
> So, *time* does matter !


Isn't that next year?


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jan 22, 2022)

liquidlino said:


> That's some great points. I have falcon, but I don't have any orchestral libraries for falcon, only pianos, synths etc. So no legato patches to study. And, of course, full kontakt means I could buy full kontakt only libraries. Hmm. Well, if a really well priced crossgrade sale happens, maybe....


Here's a great example of how Kontakt can be educational. It's a thread about Spitfire's Appassionata strings, and Karma (from Spitfire) is explaining what's going on under the hood with the release samples. To demonstrate it, he opens SSS in Kontakt, clicks the wrench, solos just the release, then shows the edit points on the waveform, edits, and plays back the different settings.

The instrument being discussed is in Spitfire's Player, _but he uses Kontakt to demonstrate_ the whole thing because in non-Kontakt players, you can't see the waveform, you can't isolate the releases, and you can't really dig in and learn the important stuff that makes the library work.

Here's the video in the post of him demonstrating using Kontakt:




Here's the post:






Spitfire Appassionata - Release Thread


Polyphonic legato?




vi-control.net


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## d.healey (Jan 22, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> How can an older version know about any new stuff from a newer version?


Still a nasty surprise when you accidentally resave a library made in an earlier version in a later version and then can't open it in the earlier version even though nothing was changed.


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## RonOrchComp (Jan 22, 2022)

Just wondering why the thread title was changed? I mean, what was wrong with it?


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## colony nofi (Jan 22, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Because you cannot replace everything you can do with scripting with mere drag&drop actions.


To go into this a little further, I've used tonnes of drag and drop systems at different times for a bunch of business use cases. MAXMSP is probably the most powerful, and guess what - we end up going into code to do a TONNE of stuff that would otherwise be impossible within the super-broad scope of all the functions that are on offer in their graphical (dnd) form. This way for instance, we can write our own networking functions (rather than relying on udp), or even bring in information from other pieces of software, or allow efficiencies that cannot be done thru DnD alone.

Also look at so called no-code systems like coda (the database platform - which I think is amazing). 90% of projects within coda USE scripting anyway, as it just opens up so much more that one can do. I see the no-code DnD system as an amazing gateway into the possibilities of coding. It allows a bunch of people to make some cool fun stuff, but once you get down to needing specifics (say for a client, or a piece of business software, or a new feature in a sample library....) you need scripting. I have never seen a platform that doesn't have scripting of some sort allow the same flexibility as a platform which does have scripting.

Indeed - I've been involved with a group of sound post production folk who are brainstorming the idea of being able to carry out multi-user editing of long form sound while maintaining temp mixes and not having to re-do work along the way as traditional workflows require. Turns out protools makes this almost impossible. Reaper can pull it off but doesn't have the functionality needed for these types of projects (at least for the editors involved...I suspect it could with enough time being sunk into training) but nuendo is *almost* there with some of its very basic scripting in the form of macros and logical presets. Now, unfortunately, these are modelled much closer to drag and drop than standard scripting, and SB doesn't seem to be interested in opening up their platform FOR scripting... but if they did its quite amazing what one could pull off. How can I be so sure? Because we then used some EXTERNAL scripting platform to take over control of nuendo and allow us to do a bunch of work for the start and the end of day that would otherwise be 2 hours each for a sound-assistant. Its not ready for prime time yet, but there's appetite to test it on a kids animation series coming up later in the year. 

I know this is off topic, but scripting is ONE of the reasons kontakt is what it is, and has the market share it has.


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## proxima (Jan 22, 2022)

David Kudell said:


> Based on what I read about Kontakt, and how it’s using old code and trying to maintain compatibility with all these old libraries, if I were NI I’d just make a brand new sampler with all new code and all the new bells and whistles. They’d need to keep supporting Kontakt but the new sampler would get all the new features. They would encourage developers to make libraries for the new product, with a built-in store with ala-Carte, and better performance to take advantage of fast SSDs.


I find it very interesting that synths sometimes go this way, breaking backwards compatibility (see Massive -> Massive X, Zebra 2 -> Zebra 3). And kudos to NI for continuing to keep Massive updated and running (even promoting it in sales!). And while Omnisphere -> Omnisphere 2 kept backwards compatibility, one wonders what Spectrasonics would have done differently if they didn't need to. 

I wonder how much work has to go into Kontakt just to keep it running on new platforms. I trust that they had long and in-depth discussions within NI about whether to go the Massive way or maintain backwards compatibility, and only they know their codebase. I'd imagine if they developed a new sampler, developers would cry out for translation software to get ease their own transitions.


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## [email protected] (Jan 22, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> It's just basic logic. How can an older version know about any new stuff from a newer version? Any new effects, potentially a newer modulator, or even better - whole new scripting language commands? It just cannot work, you get broken shit if you try that anyways. So it's better not doing it at all.


I didn't elaborate on the point at the time, but what I was getting at is that many libraries developed later might not make use of any of the newer features. It would be good if there was a way to 'save as' version 4, or 5 or whatever. One reason I brought it up is that if you don't know about this aspect of Kontakt you might unwisely upgrade, and not keep an older version. If you're a developer then it's too late, and the only people who will be able to use your library are those who have the later version. Although there might be coding issues, surely there would be some scope to offer some degree of compatibility of this kind.


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## muziksculp (Jan 22, 2022)

So, will Kontakt 7 be fully scalable ?


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## [email protected] (Jan 22, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Because you cannot replace everything you can do with scripting with mere drag&drop actions.


My puzzlement about Kontakt's reliance on KSP is not that it is there as an option for those who want to do complex things, but that so many functions could surely be incorporated into the normal 'drag and drop' functionality (for want of a better phrase, since I mean by that everything you can do without coding). That's why I wondered why that couldn't be done by stages. And it's not only about KSP but about many functions that could surely be streamlined. To take one tiny example - in Halion round robins you can select "random but not the last" directly in the standard layout. By the way, I'm not an apologist for Halion. Having learned what I needed to about Kontakt I thought I'd give Halion a go, but I found their documentation sufficiently unhelpful that I just didn't want to give another chunk of my life to learning yet another system. This is also why I mentioned the question of documentation, as it is also (potentially) a significant factor in competition between platforms. However, it seems to be a moot point since no one seems to make it a priority.


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## Nico5 (Jan 22, 2022)

homie said:


> Is Native Instruments Kontakt Dying?









homie said:


> Maybe we should ask Mike to delete this thread. Everybody goes their way and acts like nothing happened.









homie said:


> I've just defused the thread title.


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## homie (Jan 23, 2022)

RonOrchComp said:


> Just wondering why the thread title was changed? I mean, what was wrong with it?


The old title was a honest question but could have been misinterpreted. Talking Kontakt to dead surely wasn't the idea.

I'm still open to get this removed all together.


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## homie (Jan 23, 2022)

@Nico5

Thanks for the laugh. While funny in itself, that's not what happened.


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## homie (Jan 23, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> ...and ridiculously *small, obtuse and not resizable *buttons in a number of places on the interface!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


+1
Tiny and crammed. What were they just thinking?

ps This is about Steinberg HALion


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## homie (Jan 23, 2022)

Regarding Native Access

When are they going to implement filtering/sorting/grouping? As of now there is one big list/grid with everything mixed up: plugins, effects, libraries, preset packs. It's a very basic UI/UX problem.


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## StefanoM (Jan 23, 2022)

I want to say my point of view, both as a User and a Developer. I am sure that Kontakt will still have many years of long life, for several reasons. First, I believe that Kontakt for Native Instruments is a significant asset. On the one hand, the entire ecosystem of libraries for the free player, on the other, the infinite number of developers for Kontakt Full. Many users buy Kontakt Full to use some specific libraries (my Etheras are an example, Performance Samples, Fluffy, Xperimenta, and many more ). It is a tremendous advantage for Native Instruments, as otherwise, for many users, it would not make sense to have Kontakt Full. Many independent developers, like me, have gained experience on Kontakt after years of development. There are many scripters on KSP; it is a large community. Many like me hardly have the desire and time to start over, a new system, a new language, time is money. We have less and less of it. So Kontakt, for many of us, is an essential development base. We're not all Spitfire or Orchestral Tools, with their budgets to develop the own player or Hybrid Synth, but that doesn't mean we can't make libraries even better than theirs, or pretty uniques and different, and this is thanks to a platform like Kontakt, consolidated and powerful. It is not free from defects. Many things should be improved, such as the graphical interface of the internal editor.....( from my point of view as a developer I hope it will be the first big improvement) But I'm sure that will come.

Cheers

Ste


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## thesteelydane (Jan 23, 2022)

Kontakt might look like it's 20 years old, but because it is, it is also one of the most efficient and stable solutions out there. And the incredibly well documented scripting language means that almost anything is possible - if you can think it, you can probably build it in Kontakt.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 23, 2022)

[email protected] said:


> It would be good if there was a way to 'save as' version 4, or 5 or whatever


It is far from straightforward to do, and is absolutely not a priority. Instead, the overarching goal is to offer more and more features for developers to take advantage of. Looking forward, not backward.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 23, 2022)

d.healey said:


> Still a nasty surprise when you accidentally resave a library made in an earlier version in a later version and then can't open it in the earlier version even though nothing was changed.


There is a pretty verbose warning before doing a batch resave that explains it all... people should read maybe


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## Rv5 (Jan 23, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> There is a pretty verbose warning before doing a batch resave that explains it all... people should read maybe


To be fair on David I've done the same, I don't think he's talking about batch resaving rather than opening an instrument in a newer version of Kontakt, clicking save, and then not being able to load in an earlier version. I suppose one just needs to be more mindful of what version is being used/open in lieu of backward compatibility.


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## rrichard63 (Jan 23, 2022)

Rv5 said:


> I don't think he's talking about batch resaving rather than opening an instrument in a newer version of Kontakt, clicking save, and then not being able to load in an earlier version ...


When you save an .nki with an existing file name, you get a standard "already exists, do you want to replace it?" message. Feature request: if the existing .nki is from an earlier version of Kontakt, reword the message. For example, "If you overwrite this existing instrument, you will no longer be able to open it in an earlier version of Kontakt. Are you sure you want to do this?" Needs wordsmithing, but you get the idea.


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## gamma-ut (Jan 23, 2022)

If you're ever concerned about backwards compatibility, just getting into the habit of doing a bit of basic version control is a good idea (eg new file ...-K6 or -month-year) - don't simply save over existing presets unless you're absolutely sure you want to do that. Disk space is relatively cheap and nki files take up naff-all space.


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## Rv5 (Jan 23, 2022)

rrichard63 said:


> When you save an .nki with an existing file name, you get a standard "already exists, do you want to replace it?" message. Feature request: if the existing .nki is from an earlier version of Kontakt, reword the message. For example, "If you overwrite this existing instrument, you will no longer be able to open it in an earlier version of Kontakt. Are you sure you want to do this?" Needs wordsmithing, but you get the idea.


I think the scenario is more when you load an .nki into a newer version of Kontakt (which as mentioned above one should be aware of but something David and I both managed to miss at least once, I'm sure I had my reasons ahem), work on the back end and hit 'save', there's no prompt etc just an .nki that only works in the version of the Kontakt you've just worked in.



gamma-ut said:


> If you're ever concerned about backwards compatibility, just getting into the habit of doing a bit of basic version control is a good idea (eg new file ...-K6 or -month-year) - don't simply save over existing presets unless you're absolutely sure you want to do that. Disk space is relatively cheap and nki files take up naff-all space.


Not too concerned with backward compatibility here, just chiming in with a shared experience regarding the feeling of not being able to load something after saving it in a newer version (sometimes good to share the fumbles if it helps others), only something that happens once (hopefully) and then you make amendments accordingly. 

I know some customers were concerned with major updates like when 5 went to 6 but that's not exactly an annual event, otherwise pretty smooth sailing. I mean it's Kontakt, it's great, I've used it for so many years and not a single project won't have had a Kontakt instance loaded if not dozens upon dozens, had such little issue both user and developer side and heard nothing but the same from colleagues. On balance it's super solid, looking to the future yeah some things that'd be great to see and likewise it's been great to see things like Creator Tools come along and the jobs that's made so much easier and more efficient, not to mention the new FX Kontakt 6 brought with it.


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## [email protected] (Jan 23, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> It is far from straightforward to do, and is absolutely not a priority. Instead, the overarching goal is to offer more and more features for developers to take advantage of. Looking forward, not backward.


I appreciate the point, as it is hard for someone on the outside to form any clear judgements about the ins and outs of particular software development. It would be unfair to criticise a company simply because they didn't make my own wishlist their top priority. Mind you, I would be interested in any tidbits about where Kontakt development might be headed over the next few years?


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## thesteelydane (Jan 24, 2022)

StefanoM said:


> I want to say my point of view, both as a User and a Developer. I am sure that Kontakt will still have many years of long life, for several reasons. First, I believe that Kontakt for Native Instruments is a significant asset. On the one hand, the entire ecosystem of libraries for the free player, on the other, the infinite number of developers for Kontakt Full. Many users buy Kontakt Full to use some specific libraries (my Etheras are an example, Performance Samples, Fluffy, Xperimenta, and many more ). It is a tremendous advantage for Native Instruments, as otherwise, for many users, it would not make sense to have Kontakt Full. Many independent developers, like me, have gained experience on Kontakt after years of development. There are many scripters on KSP; it is a large community. Many like me hardly have the desire and time to start over, a new system, a new language, time is money. We have less and less of it. So Kontakt, for many of us, is an essential development base. We're not all Spitfire or Orchestral Tools, with their budgets to develop the own player or Hybrid Synth, but that doesn't mean we can't make libraries even better than theirs, or pretty uniques and different, and this is thanks to a platform like Kontakt, consolidated and powerful. It is not free from defects. Many things should be improved, such as the graphical interface of the internal editor.....( from my point of view as a developer I hope it will be the first big improvement) But I'm sure that will come.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Ste


I agree 100% with everything you said - just wanted to say that


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## TonalDynamics (May 10, 2022)

Faheem Hasan said:


> We are continuously developing the KONTAKT Platform and evolving it to suit the needs of modern music makers. Rest assured, there are no plans underway to "kill" KONTAKT in any way. We are very much committed to ensuring it's survival for the sake of our Partners, our dedicated and loyal customers, and of course, for our own sake as well


Thanks for replying Faheem, but I'm gonna have to call you out on this one.

As far as I can tell Kontakt isn't being actively developed at all, seeing that there are bugs which STILL exist 7 years later and your codebase hasn't been updated for two decades.

This morning I ran into this little gem:

Kontakt Pops and Clicks with Tempo Changes + External Sync

Funny enough I am not one who usually does any manual tempo mapping, I usually just use reference lead instruments for tracking my rubati, but the work I am doing right now must be parted out, and thus every note must be bar and beat accurate for reference purposes.

Manually mapped half of a 6 min. Orchestration last night, came to work today to find my Kontakt monitoring chain popping and clicking all to hell even @ low voice counts, feverishly messed around with S1, all my VSTi chains and scouring forums from noon until 6 PM before I found the answer.

^ That post is seven years old and I'm using Studio One, not Cubase, but the identical issue still exists and I lost more than half a day's work over it.

The same solution also applied to my case as with the users in that thread: Disabling External Sync in Master section fixes it.

This is unacceptable, sloppy, disconnected development.

Kontakt has a remarkably solid foundation but in my eyes you guys have not been good stewards of the program. If you are unable to give the codebase the _dire_ refresh it needs, make the UI look like it isn't something from 2005, and fix these longstanding bugs which have existed for eons due to _budget limitations_, that is understandable, but don't just waltz in here and blow a bunch of smoke up our asses by pretending that N.I. still sees Kontakt as a priority, when we both know we have been on N.I.s backburner for a decade - i.e., practically an eternity in internet years.

Sorry for the rant but I once again lost a lot of work today beta testing your software for the 100th time and feel like enough is enough - you have a virtual monopoly on this market and your users deserve better.

I hope the dev team realizes this sooner rather than later and updates Kontakt to be the innovative powerhouse it once was 15 years ago, rather than continuing to release penny-ante full version upgrades just to ensure that both your users and developers are over the proverbial barrel of being forced to upgrade just to have the privilege of buying and using new libraries on your platform.

(Chose to just bump as opposed to making a new thread, perhaps the splash in the pond will be relevant to someone)

Constructively,
Bucky


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## dnblankedelman (May 11, 2022)

TonalDynamics said:


> As far as I can tell Kontakt isn't being actively developed at all, seeing that there are bugs which STILL exist 7 years later and your codebase hasn't been updated for two decades.


Before I respond, I just want to mention that I have no connection to NI or to Kontact except having purchased a copy (probably for similar reasons you did). I also want to say this sounds really, really annoying and I'm sorry you've had to deal with it.

What I do have is a bit of training in product management in a software context, and so that's where the following comes from: every product creator has a constant choice for how to spend their pretty costly dev resources. They can either spend those resources on things that attract new customers (where customers in this case is not just you and I but also companies who want to release libraries that run in Kontact), and things that make existing customers happier like fixing bugs. Sometimes the same work can serve both purposes (where both new and existing customers dig a feature), but for the purpose of this post, let's keep them separate.

One result of this dynamic is there can be a ton of active development on a product while still not addressing longstanding, presumably non-trivial bugs like the one that bit you. This can also happen if a company is making a decision whether to spend time on building 'the next great thing/version/plaform/codebase" vs. fixing older bugs in a codebase they have already decided to jettison after their new thing is released. I believe a sole focus away from existing customers is not a great idea (I think it catches up with you at some point), but it happens.

I'm not saying any of this an as apologist for NI, I'd be peeved if I were you in this situation too. Just that it isn't so easy to conclude that there isn't active development because X bug hasn't been fixed in forever. Again, sorry, you had to deal with this.


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## Faheem Hasan (May 12, 2022)

TonalDynamics said:


> Thanks for replying Faheem, but I'm gonna have to call you out on this one.
> 
> As far as I can tell Kontakt isn't being actively developed at all, seeing that there are bugs which STILL exist 7 years later and your codebase hasn't been updated for two decades.


Hey Bucky, 

Sorry to hear that you ran into this problem and lost your work and time in the process - I can only imagine how frustrating that must be .. 

However, I must second what @dnblankedelman wrote above - which is a very fair perspective on what the deal is with Kontakt's development in house. Thanks for that! 

We are definitely continuing to develop KONTAKT (no misinformation there), but as @dnblankedelman rightly pointed, we are also unable to address each and every bug that is out there due to various competing factors. Some bugs get fixed in the latest versions of the software but given that a large portion of users still continue to use older, legacy versions of Kontakt (yes, I'm talking about Kontakt 5), those benefits may not make it to all users. 

I'm afraid I don't have much more to add here, as I am not directly involved in the Kontakt Engine's day-to-day development. I'll make sure to notify some colleagues who might be able to take a deeper look into the bug you reported with some fresh energy. 

Best,
Faheem


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## dnblankedelman (May 12, 2022)

Faheem Hasan said:


> We are definitely continuing to develop KONTAKT (no misinformation there), but as @dnblankedelman rightly pointed, we are also unable to address each and every bug that is out there due to various competing factors.


(quick reminder: while Faheem was kind enough to mention me in his response, I have no involvement with NI beyond being a customer and no visibility into their development process)

To be clear, my point was that indeed a company could indeed choose to address each and every bug, but that is a choice, and that there are very reasonable other choices a company might make and still be involved in "active development".


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## rrichard63 (May 12, 2022)

TonalDynamics said:


> That post is seven years old and I'm using Studio One, not Cubase, but the identical issue still exists and I lost more than half a day's work over it.


If a developer decides not to, or is unable to, resolve an issue reported by a customer, they owe it to the customer to inform her/him that they have no plans at present to solve the problem (preferably with some statement about why). @TonalDynamics, did you ever hear back from NI about this issue when you first encountered and reported it?


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## TonalDynamics (May 12, 2022)

dnblankedelman said:


> I'm not saying any of this an as apologist for NI, I'd be peeved if I were you in this situation too. Just that it isn't so easy to conclude that there isn't active development because X bug hasn't been fixed in forever. Again, sorry, you had to deal with this.


Just the nature of being a pro musician these days, that you also are forced to become an IT expert



I get what you're saying about prioritizing innovation over perfecting an existing platform - even though I don't believe those two things _have_ to be mutually exclusive, in the context of good business sense.

But there's the rub - N.I. is doing _neither_ with Kontakt, based on their handling of the platform over the last decade, and the statement you quoted me on is perfect evidence of that (ancient codebase/unoptimized engine). So it's not just 7 years of not fixing bugs, it's 7 years of not fixing bugs _or_ innovating, or frankly making even basic improvements like a HiDpi UI/scalable UI - the UI looks like it was from 2005-2008, because for the most part it is.

It's just particularly obnoxious when everyone in our industry knows that this is the state of affairs, yet the company continues to send PR people to keep blowing smoke like they're in full denial of the obvious.

Look, N.I. makes a lot more money pushing out KOMPLETE releases replete with MASCHINE and Reaktor content that every 'producer' and beatmaker par excellence thinks they _have _to have, than they do innovating for working industry professionals using Kontakt. I think everyone gets that, just be honest about it and stop pretending that you're 'actively developing' on our behalf when the last ten years show that this obviously isn't the case.

It reminds me of another plugin developer (whose product I still use) who put out revolutionary ampsims between 2011-2013 or so, and then for years he would say "we're working on this, working on that", and so on, people would make new posts all the time asking "when!!", "Well we had to update our coding template", and so on... well almost a decade later and he still hasn't released a new product. The niche success he initially enjoyed stalled, then dwindled, and ultimately succumbed once a few years of non-development had passed and his competitors had innovated their way past him, and then the NeuralDSP guys came along and basically put the nail in the coffin of his once-great product. All the promises and vapor eventually soured people as well of course.

I mention this developer in particular because like N.I. with Kontakt, he hasn't released any significant updates to his product/s in 9-10 years.
The difference between them is that N.I. still enjoy their monopoly with Kontakt in no small part due to their licensing scheme and legacy.



Faheem Hasan said:


> We are continuously developing the KONTAKT Platform and evolving it to suit the needs of modern music makers


To clarify, 'don't lead people on' - that's my position. You might think it reassures your user-base, but in my experience it just sucks whatever trust is left out of an already stagnant relationship. That said if you _do_ have updates in the pipeline, then at least offer a handful of details... otherwise spare us all the vapors.


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## TonalDynamics (May 12, 2022)

rrichard63 said:


> If a developer decides not to, or is unable to, resolve an issue reported by a customer, they owe it to the customer to inform her/him that they have no plans at present to solve the problem (preferably with some statement about why). @TonalDynamics, did you ever hear back from NI about this issue when you first encountered and reported it?


Oh I only discovered _that_ particular gem yesterday, I'm sure the beautiful people in that thread I referenced would have some thoughts on that front.

Cheers


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## TonalDynamics (May 12, 2022)

Faheem Hasan said:


> Hey Bucky,
> 
> Sorry to hear that you ran into this problem and lost your work and time in the process - I can only imagine how frustrating that must be ..
> 
> ...


See, I think that there is just wrongheadedness on _all kinds_ of levels as a developer.

This is the same kind of rationale we get today with a lot of 'Early Access' type of software and games - basically "pay us for it now, and we'll make sure it gets fixed later".

What you're saying takes it a step further, which is essentially "Pay us for it now, and we'll either fix it later - _or not"_

The 'or not' clause should not be a part of your vocabulary if you're trying to maintain a relationship of trust with your user community. Frankly this kind of comment only further serves to convince me that N.I. has become complacent in the space and is more or less sitting on their legacy laurels.

Believe it or not there was a time when it was considered a company's _duty_ to ensure that their product was functioning properly - get this - _before_ they released it. Mindblowing idea, I know!

This is why betas exist, it's why the NFL has preseason games, why auto manufacturers commission hundreds of crash tests each year, why chefs have people they trust taste their new dishes before rolling them out at their restaurant.

In this particular case we're not even talking about a minor bug that got missed during beta, we're talking about a gamebreaking (in particular if you intend to utilize your DAW project tempo for specific instrument time sensitive articulations or effects) glitch that makes tracking parts impossible, scales with the # of instruments within each EXT. sync'd multi and has persisted in both Cubase and S1 (that we know of, potentially others) for *7 years*.

7 years, Faheem. Who is project lead for Kontakt over at N.I. these days?
Cause it sure ain't Steve Jobs.

On second thought, he'd probably have scrapped Kontakt by now so we're probably lucky...

Cheers


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