# Kontakt GUI blurry?



## jsnleo (Sep 25, 2020)

So I switched to Mac about two years ago since then I've been having issues with Kontakt GUI. It looked so blurry like an ancient software. I also had the same issues with Waves Central, but they fixed it. Anyway I installed Kontakt 6 a while ago and I just realized the GUI still looks blurry. I was wondering if I'm the only one?


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## polypx (Sep 25, 2020)

Yeah, Kontakt is a bit blurry compared to modern software.


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## EvilDragon (Sep 26, 2020)

Yep, if you don't want it to be blurry, use a non-Retina monitor for the time being.


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## jsnleo (Sep 26, 2020)

polypx said:


> Yeah, Kontakt is a bit blurry compared to modern software.



Thank you. I thought it was just me.


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## jsnleo (Sep 26, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> Yep, if you don't want it to be blurry, use a non-Retina monitor for the time being.



Thought it'd be fixed. Dont' know when it's gonna happen.


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## EvilDragon (Sep 26, 2020)

It needs a complete GUI rewrite for it to happen. It is a collossal amount of work, not something you can do by snapping your fingers twice.


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## jsnleo (Sep 26, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> It needs a complete GUI rewrite for it to happen. It is a collossal amount of work, not something you can do by snapping your fingers twice.



Yeah but all other companies I know have redesigned their softwares. Even Waves updated their Waves Central, and it's just a plugin manager, not something we use all the time. I think people have reported this years ago and I don't know why such a big company hasn't fixed that.


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## EvilDragon (Sep 26, 2020)

Surely you're not serious when you equate a plugin manager with a 20 years old codebase of a pretty intricate sampler that has tons of functionality, with deeply entrenched dependencies and no knowledge of what HiDPI even is.



jsnleo said:


> and I don't know why such a big company hasn't fixed that.



Just gave you a few reasons above. It's a huge, costly endeavour, and there's always something more important to fix (i.e. macOS updates constantly breaking shit).

Obviously NI is aware of this, but the process is not going to be easy nor fast.


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 26, 2020)

It'll be sad if Kontakt 7 isn't that total rewrite (eg ~2 years from now?). It's not like high resolution monitors are new. Time and technological evolution is moving this for NI from a feature request to a bug. They're not alone, though, with this issue. Their lock on the market is helping them from having users jump ship, but that's only a matter of time, especially with other companies now making Kontakt substitutes for their products.

I generally no longer use plugins that don't scale, and Kontakt is an exception because it has to be. Over time, I'll move from "merely frustrated" to "angry", especially if this isn't addressed in the next full version. Just keeping the lights on, so to speak, in a product, is a good way to lose customers over time, because it's the minimum a company can do for said customers: keep it working as the world continues to move forward. Yes, I work in tech and understand challenges and constraints. I work for a company that spent a good 2 years removing Flash - some of the codebase being quite old (10-20+ years), as well.

Mass market average screen size may be small, but musician's and producers etc. etc. aren't mass market. I suspect they trend toward higher resolution on average, and will continue to do so.


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## jsnleo (Sep 26, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> Surely you're not serious when you equate a plugin manager with a 20 years old codebase of a pretty intricate sampler that has tons of functionality, with deeply entrenched dependencies and no knowledge of what HiDPI even is.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Unfortunately I am. I mentioned Waves only because people don't use it all the time so we might care less whether it looks blurry or not. It's not like all the other plugins and softwares were developed in recent three or five years, after apple started using Retina. There are softwares that definitely have been around even longer than Kontakt, and either they fixed their softwares as soon as they could/should, or their softwares somehow didn't affect by Retina. If not talking about plugins because their GUI might be easier to fix, but any software or any DAW should be hard to fix, I don't know if it needs a complete GUI rewrite or not but it shouldn't be an easy fix like snapping fingers twice. If there are companies that had the time and spent the time fixing their softwares, I don't know why NI hasn't, this didn't just happen and people start complaining about it without being patient. While I appreciate your suggestion, but I don't think any Mac user would get another set of non-Retina monitors just for a software.

Btw you don't work for NI, do you? If you do what we are doing here is pointless.


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## jsnleo (Sep 26, 2020)

vitocorleone123 said:


> It'll be sad if Kontakt 7 isn't that total rewrite (eg ~2 years from now?). It's not like high resolution monitors are new. Time and technological evolution is moving this for NI from a feature request to a bug. They're not alone, though, with this issue. Their lock on the market is helping them from having users jump ship, but that's only a matter of time, especially with other companies now making Kontakt substitutes for their products.
> 
> I generally no longer use plugins that don't scale, and Kontakt is an exception because it has to be. Over time, I'll move from "merely frustrated" to "angry", especially if this isn't addressed in the next full version. Just keeping the lights on, so to speak, in a product, is a good way to lose customers over time, because it's the minimum a company can do for said customers: keep it working as the world continues to move forward. Yes, I work in tech and understand challenges and constraints. I work for a company that spent a good 2 years removing Flash - some of the codebase being quite old (10-20+ years), as well.
> 
> Mass market average screen size may be small, but musician's and producers etc. etc. aren't mass market. I suspect they trend toward higher resolution on average, and will continue to do so.



Exactly, Retina has been around for years and fixing it should be an important thing to do. I think most people use Kontakt not because they want to but because they have to. Maybe to most people it’s just a sampler that loads their sample libraries, and if all those companies suddenly decide to use UVI Workstation, or start developing their own, Kontakt becomes less useful to them. I know Orchestral Tools will be ditching Kontakt slowly, and I was told by Spitfire CS they’re also working on it.


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## polypx (Sep 26, 2020)

Nobody cares. Kontakt still sounds and works better. If you're busy checking the screen resolution, you're probably not a composer. Just sayin....


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## jsnleo (Sep 26, 2020)

polypx said:


> Nobody cares. Kontakt still sounds and works better. If you're busy checking the screen resolution, you're probably not a composer. Just sayin....



Well that's funny. So you're saying if you're willing to pay a hundred dollars for a meal with dirt, because eating meals is just for staying alive, eating it doesn't kill you anyways? Or you're willing to buy a pair of shoes with all the mud on them, because shoes are just a pair of cushions for feet? That's ridiculous. Just sayin...


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## dedene (Sep 27, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> .. with deeply entrenched dependencies and no knowledge of what HiDPI even is.



Retina screens have been around for many, many years now. Sure, the sound is more important than the visuals, but it’s really time NI upgrades their UI’s to be a bit more modern again.


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## EvilDragon (Sep 27, 2020)

That's something that nobody other than NI can decide when and in which way. Everyone's free to vote with their wallets of course.


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 27, 2020)

polypx said:


> Nobody cares. Kontakt still sounds and works better. If you're busy checking the screen resolution, you're probably not a composer. Just sayin....



So composers have perfect vision and will always use tiny screens?


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## rrichard63 (Sep 27, 2020)

vitocorleone123 said:


> I generally no longer use plugins that don't scale, and Kontakt is an exception because it has to be





EvilDragon said:


> Everyone's free to vote with their wallets of course.


In my opinion, vitocorleone123's statement is more relevant to most film, game and production music composers than EvilDragon's.

On a separate point, my impression from earlier threads on this topic is that it wouldn't be enough to rewrite Kontakt itself. You'd also have to update every library from hundreds of developers.


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## Mike Greene (Sep 27, 2020)

rrichard63 said:


> On a separate point, my impression from earlier threads on this topic is that it wouldn't be enough to rewrite Kontakt itself. You'd also have to update every library from hundreds of developers.


Yeah, there's that, too. Libraries currently use png files, which it would _seem_ wouldn't be that hard to simply integrate into a graphics changeover, but I know of a company who spent quite a bit of money attempting to do this in a very similar situation, and they eventually pulled the plug on it because they ran into so many problems.

I can't imagine the NI guys aren't already planning for GUI improvements. It's not a trivial task, though, so who knows how high on the priority list it is.

In the meantime, it really is a matter of voting with your wallet. UVI and other platforms have vector graphics, but how many releases have we seen where people say _"Nah, but I'd buy it if it were on Kontakt"_? There's a lesson there. Kontakt has a stranglehold on the sample library market because in the battle of engine versus graphics, engine clearly wins, so that's where they continue to spend their development money.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see scalable graphics. (And I'd especially love to get rid of that ugly header and let me create my own!) But when you get right down to it, I don't think graphics are very high on most composers' wish lists, at least not compared to some of the other engine improvements we've seen.


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## Ivan M. (Sep 27, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> Surely you're not serious when you equate a plugin manager with a 20 years old codebase of a pretty intricate sampler that has tons of functionality, with deeply entrenched dependencies and no knowledge of what HiDPI even is.
> 
> Just gave you a few reasons above. It's a huge, costly endeavour, and there's always something more important to fix (i.e. macOS updates constantly breaking shit).
> 
> Obviously NI is aware of this, but the process is not going to be easy nor fast.



Actually, it should be simple to update, any decent programmer decouples UI code from the logic. The logic is complicated, yes, but this is just the UI, and it's not like it has to be reworked, it just needs to scale. Depending on the implementation, this means new 2x res images, or if it's vector UI then a simple 2x scale factor. In reaper themes, for example, you simply have a scale multiplier, and a separate dir for 2x images, and that's it, everything scales.


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## d.healey (Sep 27, 2020)

Ivan M. said:


> Actually, it should be simple to update, any decent programmer decouples UI code from the logic. The logic is complicated, yes, but this is just the UI, and it's not like it has to be reworked, it just needs to scale. Depending on the implementation, this means new 2x res images, or if it's vector UI then a simple 2x scale factor. In reaper themes, for example, you simply have a scale multiplier, and a separate dir for 2x images, and that's it, everything scales.


Yeah I don't see the difficulty with using a different set of images.


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## Mike Greene (Sep 27, 2020)

Ivan M. said:


> Actually, it should be simple to update, any decent programmer decouples UI code from the logic. The logic is complicated, yes, but this is just the UI, and it's not like it has to be reworked, it just needs to scale. Depending on the implementation, this means new 2x res images, or if it's vector UI then a simple 2x scale factor. In reaper themes, for example, you simply have a scale multiplier, and a separate dir for 2x images, and that's it, everything scales.


I would have thought the same thing, but I talked with these guys a few years ago, and there was a whole lot involved in doing it. I can't remember exactly what he told me, but I know from my own experiences that the interaction between KSP and the GUI is very quirky. I think that with all these years of patching and adding to the code, the graphics are far from being decoupled to the engine.

I would guess that if they didn't have to worry about maintaining backward compatibility, then it might not be so bad, but any new graphics code would have to be filled with bandaids to make sure all these old instruments still look right.


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## EvilDragon (Sep 27, 2020)

Ivan M. said:


> Actually, it should be simple to update, any decent programmer decouples UI code from the logic. The logic is complicated, yes, but this is just the UI, and it's not like it has to be reworked, it just needs to scale. Depending on the implementation, this means new 2x res images, or if it's vector UI then a simple 2x scale factor. In reaper themes, for example, you simply have a scale multiplier, and a separate dir for 2x images, and that's it, everything scales.



If it were that easy, it would have been done by now, I assure you. 

The thing is, NI is not using a 3rd party UI toolkit/framework, they use their own homebrew, which doesn't support that "secondary set of images" thing. So, no, it's not easy, even if UI code is decoupled from logic (for the most part!).


(Also, I remember that sorting out HiDPI for Reaper wasn't exactly a picnic either, it took a decent amount of time, and even then there are still some issues left.)


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## Mike Greene (Sep 27, 2020)

At the risk of sounding like a total apologist for NI (really, I too wish the graphics were better), there's one more story I want to share. A few weeks ago, someone suggested I add DAW transport control for RealiDrums. I had already implemented that same feature in Hip Hop Creator, so I figured this should take an hour at most. Easy.

Long story short, that little tweak had unforeseen consequences, which took over a week to fix. Part of which you can read about in this thread, which also shows some of the quirkiness in how the engine works. (For those who don't want to read that thread, what I eventually discovered is that in the Listener callback, if you tell KSP to wait 2 ticks, then wait 2 ticks more, and then wait 2 ticks more, then Kontakt will have waited a grand total of 1 tick. Not 6 ticks. Yep.)

My point being that on the surface, this looks easy. Heck, even after saying all I've said, I'm still thinking that converting a pixel based system to a vector system shouldn't be _that_ hard. But ... I have dozens of similar RealiDrums examples, where I know my wife is sick of me regaling her with stories that start with the words, _"So, I thought this was gonna be really easy ... "_


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## EvilDragon (Sep 27, 2020)

Mike Greene said:


> Converting a pixel based system to a vector system isn't _that_ hard.



Really depends on the scope and how much there is to change. In Kontakt, there is an _awful lot of things to change_ to make that happen. Reaktor is even worse.


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 27, 2020)

For sure - with such a "storied" history of Kontakt, this seems like a 2 year project, not a 6 month one. Or maybe 1 year if was pretty much all-hands-on-deck and nothing but crashing bugs would be addressed for that time. Absolutely not trivial.

However, it's becoming a non-trivial issue, as well.


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## Paul SAS (Sep 27, 2020)

Well, as much as I'd love to see a new, more flexible and designable GUI am I more than happy with what I've got now. Because the improvements they made from 5 to 6 soundwise like the added effects and the Sample DnD alone weigh much more to me than the graphics alone. In the end I will most likely care about how it sounds and not how it looks since a lot of the time you won't even have the Plugin opened. But that's just my few bits to say about this topic and I can still understand people complaining about it


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## Crowe (Sep 27, 2020)

Isn't it fantastic how companies like Apple keep thinking up new stuff to market and make people believe they really need it, just so they can sell them more new shit? It gets even better when the customers that have then bought into their new Ultra High Definition Retina marketing believe that all other companies need to shape up and support said inventions that are there to sell people more stuff _or they are behind the times._

I hate this. I hate this so much.

Edit:

That is not to say Kontakt couldn't use some graphical upgrades, but seriously. F*** 4k.


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 27, 2020)

Apple didn’t create 4K. They created a stupid name for high resolution is all. Computer monitors have always gotten bigger and/or higher resolution. It’s not new. It’s not a surprise. Technology evolves. Companies evolve with it or go away. Pretty simple.


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## Crowe (Sep 27, 2020)

vitocorleone123 said:


> Apple didn’t create 4K. They created a stupid name for high resolution is all. Computer monitors have always gotten bigger and/or higher resolution. It’s not new. It’s not a surprise. Technology evolves. Companies evolve with it or go away. Pretty simple.



Nintendo would like a word.


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## Paul Cardon (Sep 28, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> Really depends on the scope and how much there is to change. In Kontakt, there is an _awful lot of things to change_ to make that happen. Reaktor is even worse.


I'm guessing a big part of it has to do with button areas and dragging, the way "steps" of the mouse translate into GUI elements, that a lot of interactions are based on per-pixel movements and changing any of those interactions away from the 1:1 that exists now would add a million complexities? Does Windows and Retina scaling translate that stuff down into programs as if they're at their 1:1?


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## Lindon (Sep 28, 2020)

OK so there lets assume there are a truck load of issues with this "fix" as Mario says, lets says it 5 person-years of effort to do. Yeah I know that's outrageous...it took less than 3 person-years to build Kontakt's current biggest competitor, but lets go with it anyway. 

Let's also use some of Mario's advice about where Kontakt fits into NI's bottom-line (this gets mentioned every time we hear "Oh, NI are going to disappear..what will happen to Kontakt"), that it is in the end their cash-cow, and is very profitable for them. 

Plus we should believe Mario because, well he's an honest guy, and yes he does (or has done) work (on contract) with NI - so he does have insights. And by the way to suggest what he does here is "pointless" because of this really really misses his MASSIVE contribution to these forums... 

In this situation (there are problems - some really big but its a cash-cow) I'm left with the feeling that NI don't invest enough in Kontakt - anyone who thinks porting existing effects into each release is "major development effort" is I think a bit naive. 

As Mike pointed out there are quirky horrible bugs in Kontakt (there are bugs in all code - even mine!) and as others have pointed out there are end-user requests (like the graphics) outstanding for years...

5-person years of effort isn't a massive deal to a company with NI's turnover - it just really isn't. So that's not enough of an excuse. 

So in the end (again as Mario points out) you can only vote with your feet - I know I did.


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## EvilDragon (Sep 28, 2020)

Lindon said:


> anyone who thinks porting existing effects into each release is "major development effort" is I think a bit naive.



Actually it's far from straightforward, considering it's basically melding different codebases with enough differences to give one a pause. Replika was a bitch to port and it still has unresolved bugs (some quite severe), and Mod Pack was also a pretty complicated ordeal with unforeseen circumstances arising left and right. But sure, all that doesn't compare to redoing the GUI from scratch.



Lindon said:


> it took less than 3 person-years to build Kontakt's current biggest competitor



Obviously helped by the fact it's JUCE-based where you get UI scalability and a lot of other things for free basically. It has a different set of problems, though.


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## Lindon (Sep 28, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> Actually it's far from straightforward, considering it's basically melding different codebases with enough differences to give one a pause. Replika was a bitch to port and it still has unresolved bugs (some quite severe), and Mod Pack was also a pretty complicated ordeal with unforeseen circumstances arising left and right. But sure, all that doesn't compare to redoing the GUI from scratch.


A pause yes, but that was all...



EvilDragon said:


> Obviously helped by the fact it's JUCE-based where you get UI scalability and a lot of other things for free basically. It has a different set of problems, though.



Sure was - and there reason NI dont adopt JUCE? And please dont say "because of the code base" Honestly I've been involved in many many porting exercises between old code bases and targetted new ones - its C++ in and C++ out the differences are a long way from insurmountable -- even a complete re-write of Kontakt (probably the way I would go if I was a technical architect at NI) using JUCE wouldn't take them the two elapsed years we see between Kontakt major releases...

But in this discussion we will go down the path of ever smaller "points" - and thats not the point. 

This is the point: Its a cash cow - they have the resources and they are clearly refusing to apply them.


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## EvilDragon (Sep 28, 2020)

Lindon said:


> and there reason NI dont adopt JUCE?



I don't know, actually. There's a thing or two to say about German stubbornness  They have no problem in utilizing Qt for front end of their new stuff, but the rest (plugin format handling, various basic DSP functions or any sort of file handling etc.) is all internal NI libraries that have been there for decades, and is been working just fine (why break what works).


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## Lindon (Sep 28, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> (why break what works).



I think you know the answer to this - you've given it yourself no?


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## Ivan M. (Sep 28, 2020)

EvilDragon said:


> If it were that easy, it would have been done by now, I assure you.
> 
> The thing is, NI is not using a 3rd party UI toolkit/framework, they use their own homebrew, which doesn't support that "secondary set of images" thing. So, no, it's not easy, even if UI code is decoupled from logic (for the most part!).
> 
> ...



Yeah, they play it safe, and can't blame them, you don't want the whole audio world come screaming at you :D


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## Ivan M. (Sep 28, 2020)

That said, although not updating makes sense from the risk management perspective, they will have to, the market will force them, or drive them out... Let's see what happens


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## EvilDragon (Sep 28, 2020)

Obviously NI is aware of the need for HiDPI support (as evident in their newer plugin releases), there is an exit plan, but it's not going to happen tomorrow.


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## P.N. (Oct 4, 2020)

Shiirai said:


> Isn't it fantastic how companies like Apple keep thinking up new stuff to market and make people believe they really need it, just so they can sell them more new shit? It gets even better when the customers that have then bought into their new Ultra High Definition Retina marketing believe that all other companies need to shape up and support said inventions that are there to sell people more stuff _or they are behind the times._





vitocorleone123 said:


> Apple didn’t create 4K. They created a stupid name for high resolution is all. Computer monitors have always gotten bigger and/or higher resolution. It’s not new. It’s not a surprise. Technology evolves. Companies evolve with it or go away. Pretty simple.



The fact that Apple calls it "Retina" and somehow that term ends up being used in tech discussions is the biggest "wth" moment for me. 
On a similar note, a lot of people seem to think Nvidia invented ray tracing because of their RTX cards...
The wonderful world of BS marketing.


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## topaz (Oct 22, 2021)

Once you have used a HiDpi display kontakt looks blurry even on a non HiDpi display 

Just like the many non HD plugins still dragging. :-( NI, Air, Steinberg, etc.

Winners, Arturia, Spectrasonics, IK Multimedia, U-he, MeldaProduction, and more.


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## Elrik Settee (Oct 22, 2021)

jsnleo said:


> Unfortunately I am. I mentioned Waves only because people don't use it all the time so we might care less whether it looks blurry or not. It's not like all the other plugins and softwares were developed in recent three or five years, after apple started using Retina. There are softwares that definitely have been around even longer than Kontakt, and either they fixed their softwares as soon as they could/should, or their softwares somehow didn't affect by Retina. If not talking about plugins because their GUI might be easier to fix, but any software or any DAW should be hard to fix, I don't know if it needs a complete GUI rewrite or not but it shouldn't be an easy fix like snapping fingers twice. If there are companies that had the time and spent the time fixing their softwares, I don't know why NI hasn't, this didn't just happen and people start complaining about it without being patient. While I appreciate your suggestion, but I don't think any Mac user would get another set of non-Retina monitors just for a software.
> 
> Btw you don't work for NI, do you? If you do what we are doing here is pointless.


I got a crappy Dell 21" display, rotated it to portrait and sat it in between my iMac and my AOC 27". I use the free EasyRes to change the resolution so that I can actually use Kontakt, having crap eyesight. The Dell cost about £50.


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