# Switching to Kontakt 6



## ptram (Jan 4, 2019)

Hi,

I don't know if this should have been in a more generic forum, but maybe this is correct in the Kontakt forum.

I wonder if we can safely switch to Kontakt 6 from 5 for all our duties. Is it ready? Are there known incompatibilities with existing libraries and scripts?

Thank you!
Paolo


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## Desire Inspires (Jan 4, 2019)

ptram said:


> Hi,
> 
> I don't know if this should have been in a more generic forum, but maybe this is correct in the Kontakt forum.
> 
> ...



Why switch? You can use both.


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## EvilDragon (Jan 4, 2019)

There are no incompatibilities with instruments released in previous versions of Kontakt. Backwards compatibility is extremely important to Kontakt team, so don't worry about that.


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## ptram (Jan 4, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> There are no incompatibilities with instruments released in previous versions of Kontakt.


That's great news, thank you!

@Desire Inspires, I'll for sure keep K5 installed, to avoid having to immediately reprogram everything!

Paolo


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## whiskers (Jan 4, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> There are no incompatibilities with instruments released in previous versions of Kontakt. Backwards compatibility is extremely important to Kontakt team, so don't worry about that.


do you ever sleep? You're everywhere!


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## reddognoyz (Jan 4, 2019)

Is there any short cut for replacing K5 instruments in your VEP instances with K6? Or is it just the tedium of saving patches and multis and opening them with K6, because I'll hold off then until I need/want K6


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## EvilDragon (Jan 4, 2019)

whiskers said:


> do you ever sleep? You're everywhere!



Yeah I get 5 or 6 hours per day. :D



reddognoyz said:


> Is there any short cut for replacing K5 instruments in your VEP instances with K6? Or is it just the tedium of saving patches and multis and opening them with K6, because I'll hold off then until I need/want K6



No shortcut. All manly mouse clicking power!


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## Shad0wLandsUK (Jan 4, 2019)

EvilDragon said:


> Yeah I get 5 or 6 hours per day. :D
> 
> 
> 
> No shortcut. All manly mouse clicking power!


I have a *manly* mouse too  (Logitech MX Master)



I know... nobody like a smart arse


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## Deelanee Orchestra (Jan 9, 2019)

Desire Inspires said:


> Why switch? You can use both.


Quick question: do you need two complete licenses to use 5 and 6?


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## whiskers (Jan 9, 2019)

Elaine Gallant said:


> Quick question: do you need two complete licenses to use 5 and 6?


Short answer, no. However, 5 to 6 is a paid upgrade. So you're either upgrading kontakt alone, or Komplete entirely.

K11 comes with kontakt 5 and K12 with 6. I think you'll have to pay for the kontakt upgrade to 6 if you don't want Komplete 12, but you'd probably have both versions of kontakt available then. Personally I don't see the point in running both so uninstalled 5.

I upgraded k11u to K12U CE and have both 5 & 6. You should be able to upgrade kontakt without buying Komplete again, or you could upgrade the entire Komplete package.

Though IIRC the price difference for a komplete and kontakt upgrade is not that much.

@EvilDragon -- how far off am I?


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## Bluemount Score (Jan 9, 2019)

whiskers said:


> do you ever sleep? You're everywhere!


You as well whiskers :D


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## EvilDragon (Jan 10, 2019)

whiskers said:


> @EvilDragon -- how far off am I?



You're not off at all, AFAIK.


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## Soundhound (Feb 1, 2019)

When I've batch saved a library in Kontakt 6, it seems I can no longer open it in Kontakt 5, it says Kontakt too old a version to open the library... something to that effect.

Will projects that have instances of K5 in it with libraries which have been batch saved in K6 not be able to open those instances? That would be bad. Will it just open an instance K6 instead with the same instrument, settings etc?


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## EvilDragon (Feb 1, 2019)

Soundhound said:


> When I've batch saved a library in Kontakt 6, it seems I can no longer open it in Kontakt 5, it says Kontakt too old a version to open the library... something to that effect.



That is normal, Kontakt is not forwards compatible (older versions of Kontakt cannot open files made by a newer version).



Soundhound said:


> Will projects that have instances of K5 in it with libraries which have been batch saved in K6 not be able to open those instances? That would be bad. Will it just open an instance K6 instead with the same instrument, settings etc?



No, because your DAW projects do *not* reference the NKIs on your hard drive, those NKIs are all stored in the project file itself, so when you batch resave a library, that doesn't affect any of its instances loaded in existing projects. However, if you try to load files from that same library in K5 and you batch resaved in K6, you know what will happen.


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## Soundhound (Feb 1, 2019)

Understood. My concern was opening a project with an instance of K5 in it and not being able to open a library that has been batch saved in K6. So now when I open a project such as that, it will open a K6 instance instead it seems, and it will be saved that way etc.?


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## EvilDragon (Feb 1, 2019)

Soundhound said:


> So now when I open a project such as that, it will open a K6 instance instead it seems, and it will be saved that way etc.?



No. It will open with K5 as it was saved with K5 instances. You would need to manually replace K5 with K6 in your project and reload all the instruments if you want to keep things up to date.


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## Soundhound (Feb 1, 2019)

Ah, thanks for clarifying for me (slooooowww on the uptake here.) So I'll be able to work with old K5 project instances of a library that I've since then batch reserved in K6, I just will have to instantiate any new instances with K6. I'm keeping K6 and K5 on my system so that'll be fine. 

Thanks ED, appreciate your knowledge (and otherworldly punctuality!) as always.


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