# Funny rant : Why kontakt GUI feels like we are in 1995 ?



## Dr Bensmir (Jul 20, 2022)

Hello, it's a question I have genuinely asked myself. I guess the people in charge have very old standards in term of GUI, and as long as it works fine, they don't see the point of doing more

Joke aside, I love kontakt for what it's capable of, but how do you see the future of Kontakt ? Now that many companies are developping their own sampler ?

ps : And yes, I believe GUI is not irrelevant. We are artists, not mechanical engineers. Wathever you are going to stare at while doing an artistic task that requires you to develop some sort of aesthetic is relevant


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## Dr.Quest (Jul 20, 2022)

So you are using Kontakt as is to do your own sampling? Because for me the GUI depends on the the developer. I rarely ever see Kontakts true GUI. There are many many good designers like Sonokinetic and Hammer + Wave that makes it a pleasure to work with.


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## Dr Bensmir (Jul 20, 2022)

Dr.Quest said:


> So you are using Kontakt as is to do your own sampling? Because for me the GUI depends on the the developer. I rarely ever see Kontakts true GUI. There are many many good designers like Sonokinetic and Hammer + Wave that makes it a pleasure to work with.


No, not to do my own sampling Talking stictly about the Kontakt part, meaning the browser, the quickload, the output menu, the tiny font size, the in-built effects and mapping menu, everything is to tiny and small etc.


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## chillbot (Jul 20, 2022)

Have you heard about Engine?


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## gsilbers (Jul 20, 2022)

Dr Bensmir said:


> No, not to do my own sampling Talking stictly about the Kontakt part, meaning the browser, the quickload, the output menu, the tiny font size, the in-built effects and mapping menu, everything is to tiny and small etc.


oh , the tiny font size is a german thing. 

thats my guess after 20 years using all types of audio apps. 

Germans love tiny fonts.


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## StefanoM (Jul 20, 2022)

Dr Bensmir said:


> No, not to do my own sampling Talking stictly about the Kontakt part, meaning the browser, the quickload, the output menu, the tiny font size, the in-built effects and mapping menu, everything is to tiny and small etc.


I'm curious Why there is this need for ALL BIG ...

I work with many plugins, I've three screens, and I don't have the space to open all I need.

For me, The GUI of Kontakt ( the external ) GUI is ok

Maybe the problem could be for our developers, and when you open the edit area. 🙃


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## rrichard63 (Jul 20, 2022)

I have read in other threads that the main roadblock is the fact that so many third party libraries would be broken by any major redesign of Kontakt's GUI.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 20, 2022)

Focusing on the GUI is like being distracted by the bright shiny object. You need to spend more time learning your way around the features of Kontakt and you'll quickly see why is sooo much deeper than any proprietary sample player.


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## Crowe (Jul 20, 2022)

There is no issue with the GUI. It may not be hyperslick and overdesigned like most stuff is these days, but there is no actual problem with it. It's perfectly usable and pretty intuitive.

"I guess the people in charge have very old standards in term of GUI, and as long as it works fine, they don't see the point of doing more"

There is no point in fixing something that isn't broken. I honestly think it's pretty shitty to think a design is bad just because it isn't modern. It's generally caused by everyone and their mothers stealing their design ideas from companies who have invested the most money in their designs. Microsoft. Apple. 'Modern'. In a very real sense this causes homogenization and laziness.

It's frickin' ridiculous that the Windows 8 start screen has become the norm.

I have way too many arguments with my company's designer who feels he needs to redesign our apps every fucking time he touches them. It's the very height of vanity.

Now *that*, was a rant.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 20, 2022)

It seems like in the last year or so, people are constantly starting these conversations about the Kontakt GUI being "outdated" and I wonder what's driving the sudden traffic?


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## Crowe (Jul 20, 2022)

Land of Missing Parts said:


> It seems like in the last year or so, people are constantly starting these conversations about the Kontakt GUI being "outdated" and I wonder what's driving the sudden traffic?


That's a good question. I don't really understand why, either. Front-end GUI is mostly the responsibility of Library Developers. The backend, or sampler, really is fine as it is. Speaking as a developer, one of the worst things you can do to us is change our working environments for no reason. Or maybe that's just me.

Just sayin', if Microsoft starts re-designing my Visual Studio into the modern era I'll be throwing hissyfits for _years_.

Maybe it's not that the discussion is new, but that is has changed. As 'GUI' here seems to imply the sampler, maybe it's the same it's always been. People can't find their way around easily and don't want to open the manual, so it's 'bad design'. Only it's not 'bad design' anymore, it's 'old design' now.


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## CoffeeLover (Jul 20, 2022)

What Kontakt GUI? 
Hehehe shit have you seen all the sequencing softwares out there?they are all extreemly hideous and In comparison Kontakt is a Diamond shining in an ugly drawer.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 20, 2022)

The GUI thing is window dressing.

The real issue is that newer libraries are closed, and that's the future we're heading toward as developers drift away from Kontakt.

Want to tweak the start times of your shorts? If it's in Kontakt, you can pop open the wrench, edit it, resave the patch. If it's in a closed player...well, you can do a video capture, email support, then wait for months or years.

Cory Pelizari is sharing mod patches that fix volume irregularities. Oh wait, sorry...he can only do that with Kontakt libraries. Closed sample player customers, you'll just have to wait to see if an update ever gets released.

But hey, taking away all those controls from the user sure leaves a *c_lean GUI interface_* .


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## jcrosby (Jul 20, 2022)

chillbot said:


> Have you heard about Engine?


Well played sir.


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## Dr Bensmir (Jul 20, 2022)

I think you are missing my point here. Not saying that kontakt "design" is bad. I know Kontakt in and out, I know it's super powerful and you can do many things with it

I am strictly talking about the aesthetic here. Who talk about "fixing" anything ? It's about improving the look of it. Now because something is fully functional it's forbidden to suggest an aesthetic improvement ?

I am working on a orchestral template these days, and my eyes hurt like crazy because of the tiny fonts and tiny buttons. Nobody is talking about redesigning the GUI every 2 years, but let's face it, monitors and resolution have evolved a lot, and Kontakt gui is extremely old, that's it

I guess some people only see the engineering side of softwares: does it work ? does it have many features ? Good then don't change the rest because it's only superficial

I like things that looks good, it's pleasing to the eyes, it's as much a piece of art as a functioning software, and I think both approaches can coexist (fabfilter for example). And what are we doing here anyway if not creating art with those softwares


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 20, 2022)

Dr Bensmir said:


> I think you are missing my point here.


I think you may not realize that your "Funny Rant" is actually a point that's been beaten to death in past posts in the last year or so.


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## Dr Bensmir (Jul 20, 2022)

Okay I didn't visit vi control in a long time to be honest

If so, then it only makes it more relevant. If so many people are complaining, then there IS something wrong. If you own a software and many people keep complaining about something for many years, what will be your reaction as a devs ? "No, my customers know nothing, this is how it needs to be"

Now let's agree on something, Kontakt is better than any other samplers from SF, orchestral tools etc.


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## robgb (Jul 20, 2022)

Dr Bensmir said:


> Hello, it's a question I have genuinely asked myself. I guess the people in charge have very old standards in term of GUI, and as long as it works fine, they don't see the point of doing more


It isn't gorgeous, but 1995?


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## Denkii (Jul 20, 2022)

SA player is the pre rendered version of Kontakt. Prettier but even less possibilities of how to work with it.


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## sundrowned (Jul 20, 2022)

Apart from it could be bit bigger I think it looks great. It's quite elegant in its way.
The thing I could do with is key shortcuts. Everything needs to have key shortcuts in K7.


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## d.healey (Jul 20, 2022)

Native Instruments Kontakt - Future developments?


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: Developers made their own players to gain full control over their product and copy protection...



vi-control.net









Is Kontakt 7 "On the horizon"?


Just saw this. What did I miss?



vi-control.net


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## SergeD (Jul 20, 2022)

A nice trick to remember, 

Magnifier keyboard shortcuts

To do thisPressZoom in.Windows logo key + Plus sign (+)Zoom out.Windows logo key + Minus sign (-)Zoom in and out using the mouse scroll wheel.Ctrl + Alt + Mouse scroll wheel
 
Very useful to avoid eyes bleeding.


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## SupremeFist (Jul 20, 2022)

SergeD said:


> A nice trick to remember,
> 
> Magnifier keyboard shortcuts
> 
> ...


Yep you can set up the same thing on a Mac in Accessibility settings. A must for using any Kontakt libraries on a 4k display.


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## Dr Bensmir (Jul 20, 2022)

SergeD said:


> A nice trick to remember,
> 
> Magnifier keyboard shortcuts
> 
> ...


Thanks, that's extremely useful


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## Phazma (Jul 20, 2022)

I have no problem with kontakt’s front end GUI but when you click on the wrench… holy cow that’s one intimidating, convoluted mess of many small things that jump at you all at once. Yet whatever it is I need to tweak seems to be hidden somewhere under some sub-tab of a sub-page using terminology that would never make me guess it is there. I remember I had to watch a tutorial just to change pitch bend range, could be a simple slider at the bottom of the GUI like in most synths and instead this is how it has to be done: 

Sure, Kontakt is a very complex sampler and all the options need to be somewhere. But still it could be designed and organized in a much cleaner and more modern way so that navigating through its myriad of features becomes possible without looking every single thing up or pulling up the manual whenever a sample needs to be edited.


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## MusiquedeReve (Jul 20, 2022)

All I want is for Kontakt to be scaleable


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## rrichard63 (Jul 20, 2022)

Phazma said:


> I have no problem with kontakt’s front end GUI but when you click on the wrench… holy cow that’s one intimidating, convoluted mess of many small things that jump at you all at once. Yet whatever it is I need to tweak seems to be hidden somewhere under some sub-tab of a sub-page using terminology that would never make me guess it is there. I remember I had to watch a tutorial just to change pitch bend range, could be a simple slider at the bottom of the GUI like in most synths and instead this is how it has to be done:
> 
> Sure, Kontakt is a very complex sampler and all the options need to be somewhere. But still it could be designed and organized in a much cleaner and more modern way so that navigating through its myriad of features becomes possible without looking every single thing up or pulling up the manual whenever a sample needs to be edited.



I think it might be possible to do this without break any existing libraries. Clicking on the wrench icon could open a new window that wouldn't have to disturb whatever library is open at the moment.


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## Nico5 (Jul 20, 2022)

Crowe said:


> … designer who feels he needs to redesign our apps every fucking time he touches them. It's the very height of vanity.


… too many designers appear to be in the business of showing off their artistic talent, rather than serving the needs of the users/customers.

Similar with many web designers.


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## Nico5 (Jul 20, 2022)

Dr Bensmir said:


> Hello, it's a question I have genuinely asked myself. I guess the people in charge have very old standards in term of GUI, and as long as it works fine, they don't see the point of doing more


Have you considered that maybe it’s very difficult to keep up with ever changing hardware and operating systems when your code was written a long time ago by programmers long gone with programming tools long since outdated while your code base is humongous, extremely feature rich and resultingly complex?


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## PaulieDC (Jul 20, 2022)

rrichard63 said:


> I have read in other threads that the main roadblock is the fact that so many third party libraries would be broken by any major redesign of Kontakt's GUI.


Absolutely.


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## jbuhler (Jul 20, 2022)

Land of Missing Parts said:


> The GUI thing is window dressing.
> 
> The real issue is that newer libraries are closed, and that's the future we're heading toward as developers drift away from Kontakt.
> 
> ...


Increasingly new Kontakt player libraries are also closed.


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## PaulieDC (Jul 20, 2022)

Funny, I dabbled with MIDI back in '92-'93 with a Proteus MPS+ keyboard and MasterTracks Pro on a 68040 Mac, then it hit the closet. Got married, eventually became a software developer in the late 90s, etc etc but still did live sound and live recording as well as my photography biz. Got pulled FULLY back into MIDI Orchestration in 2016 (and that bug chomped me HARD, let me tell you) and got an EW subscription when the I first started, and had no clue what I was doing. I will say I was blown away with what was now available and especially DAWs. Eventually I bought Komplete because everybody said buy Komplete plus I discovered Spitfire and OT, all needing Kontakt. So late at night I'm trying to learn orchestration and then I have to open either Play or Kontakt, and the complex weirdness just, and I'll say it, sucked the creativity right out of me. As a developer, I'm looking at the massive clickable areas and layers in Kontakt plus that area on the left they call navigation, and it just always got in the way, but, everyone said it's the standard. TBH, I can't stand it. BUT, BEFORE Y'ALL KILL ME, I totally totally understand that this has been the workhorse during all my hiatus years, just like Photoshop has been the workhorse for me, and I know PS inside out upside down and LOVE it. Yes, with it's massive confusing interface. So I know how passionate most are on here about Kontakt and I'm thrilled you've had this VERY powerful environment to work in all these years, which I KNOW was one of the reasons that VI technology was able to progress... Kontakt has crazy amazing routing and scripting and 168 other areas I'm not aware of. Other than the UI, I absolutely appreciate it can do, especially after buying a Groove 3 course and going through all that with my jaw hanging, lol.

It's just not for me. I'm still an student at this point and once I composed several things (FINALLY) in my online class earlier this year, I just took to SINE. It's simple, and I know it's missing many things, just like this composer, lol. So I've committed to SINE and will grow with it, and I'm fine with the SA player as well for BBCSO, AROOF and EWC, which means I have parked SSS, SCS and SSW. I pretty much have all I need from OT and SA, so I have made the commitment to use a 100% Kontaktless workflow. Oh, and the 😍VSL Synchron Piano plugin😍, that thing is a work of art. Those are my three and I'm sticking to them. I wish I could transfer my whole EastWest investment to someone, I'm not going to use it either. These license restrictions are ridiculous, I could be helping out young people getting into this who are broke. Oh well.

A couple times I started to write all of this but figured I'd get pummeled. This thread seemed like a good place to toss it out there. I realize me or my workflow has no bearing or importance, I get that, but since this thread surfaced, I'm tossing this out there so I can have fun dodging the smart bombs, LOL! OH, ALSO, I'm even MORE insane than that: Once the startup of a template or new project is done with naming and all that, I do NOT want to see a QWERTY keyboard anywhere, I see them all day long and there is NOTHING musically creative about their existence. I keep the Apple wireless magic whatsit off to the side and grab if needed. Love how lightweight it is, so that's why I use it with a PC and just tweak the Registry so the keys work with Windows. ANYWAY, I've assembled a set of controllers that allow me to ditch it. It includes Monogram CC, Stream Deck, touchscreen, FaderPort, custom CC faders and other things (thinking about doing a video on it for fun). I'm almost there, have some Monogram config stuff to work out. SO--I end up with an SL88 Grand, array of controllers and simple SINE and Spitfire players, and I love it, there's _zero creativity block_ when I sit down.

Now I just need to learn how to compose. There's that. 

Oh, for some reason I really took to Cubase which kind of contradicts the "not wanting complex UIs" bit I just handed you, but Cubase has this similar feel to Photoshop to me. I know, weird. So I fell for it hard and there's no looking back. TBH, I see ProTools, and I'm looking at Kontakt. Just not for me.

As we used to say back in Jersey, all I just said and four bucks gets you a ride on the subway.


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## vitocorleone123 (Jul 20, 2022)

The UI is too small for modern screens - it needs to scale. Without the user having to work around it with OS settings and zooming etc. 

This is my professional opinion. Unlike music, I’m not a hobbyist when it comes to UX! 😃

Even better would be to be designed larger to allow for better, more modern layout and usability - but I’m not familiar enough with the sample developer side to say for sure on this particular point.


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## Nico5 (Jul 20, 2022)

vitocorleone123 said:


> The UI is too small for modern screens - it needs to scale.


Agreed.

In the meantime - until software catches up - my long term workaround has been to never display my DAW and plugins in 4K on a screen smaller than 40". (That's where the pixel size ends up being very close to the same size as a 24" full HD monitor). 

It's a work-around, that lets me enjoy older non-scalable software much more.


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## Zhao Shen (Jul 20, 2022)

I think some of the defense re: Kontakt's GUI not needing to change isn't super well-founded. Kontakt's own GUI is independent of instrument GUIs and wouldn't necessarily break anything.

Personally, I'm fine with the aesthetic of Kontakt's GUI. It isn't shiny, but it does the job. I'd be fine with an aesthetic update, too - I don't really care as long as it continues to let me make music.

What I do take issue with is how badly Kontakt's current feature set supports organization. The libraries tab is useless for those with more than a handful of libraries. Database is archaic, and Quickload is simply the least bad way of accessing your samples.


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## Getsumen (Jul 20, 2022)

Land of Missing Parts said:


> It seems like in the last year or so, people are constantly starting these conversations about the Kontakt GUI being "outdated" and I wonder what's driving the sudden traffic?


Every developer has released new players, all with new "sleek" and "modern" designs. Some are good, others we know the opinions of


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 20, 2022)

Thing is, I'm not even looking at the instrument most of the time. I'm looking at the DAW. I enable a track, then play.

If I'm opening the instrument GUI, it's because something isn't working right, and I'm trying to fix it. Or I'm adjusting mics.


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## Nico5 (Jul 20, 2022)

PaulieDC said:


> Funny, I dabbled with MIDI back in '92-'93 with a Proteus MPS+ keyboard and MasterTracks Pro on a 68040 Mac, then it hit the closet. Got married, eventually became a software developer in the late 90s, etc etc but still did live sound and live recording as well as my photography biz. Got pulled FULLY back into MIDI Orchestration in 2016 (and that bug chomped me HARD, let me tell you) and got an EW subscription when the I first started, and had no clue what I was doing. I will say I was blown away with what was now available and especially DAWs. Eventually I bought Komplete because everybody said buy Komplete plus I discovered Spitfire and OT, all needing Kontakt. So late at night I'm trying to learn orchestration and then I have to open either Play or Kontakt, and the complex weirdness just, and I'll say it, sucked the creativity right out of me. As a developer, I'm looking at the massive clickable areas and layers in Kontakt plus that area on the left they call navigation, and it just always got in the way, but, everyone said it's the standard. TBH, I can't stand it. BUT, BEFORE Y'ALL KILL ME, I totally totally understand that this has been the workhorse during all my hiatus years, just like Photoshop has been the workhorse for me, and I know PS inside out upside down and LOVE it. Yes, with it's massive confusing interface. So I know how passionate most are on here about Kontakt and I'm thrilled you've had this VERY powerful environment to work in all these years, which I KNOW was one of the reasons that VI technology was able to progress... Kontakt has crazy amazing routing and scripting and 168 other areas I'm not aware of. Other than the UI, I absolutely appreciate it can do, especially after buying a Groove 3 course and going through all that with my jaw hanging, lol.
> 
> It's just not for me. I'm still an student at this point and once I composed several things (FINALLY) in my online class earlier this year, I just took to SINE. It's simple, and I know it's missing many things, just like this composer, lol. So I've committed to SINE and will grow with it, and I'm fine with the SA player as well for BBCSO, AROOF and EWC, which means I have parked SSS, SCS and SSW. I pretty much have all I need from OT and SA, so I have made the commitment to use a 100% Kontaktless workflow. Oh, and the 😍VSL Synchron Piano plugin😍, that thing is a work of art. Those are my three and I'm sticking to them. I wish I could transfer my whole EastWest investment to someone, I'm not going to use it either. These license restrictions are ridiculous, I could be helping out young people getting into this who are broke. Oh well.
> 
> ...


… is there maybe a proportionality of your experience level with a given type of software and your tolerance for complex UIs?


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## PaulieDC (Jul 20, 2022)

Nico5 said:


> … is there maybe a proportionality of your experience level with a given type of software and your tolerance for complex UIs?


No, because I'm completely weird. I can't always explain why I fancy something, so please don't take any advice from me.


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## Saxer (Jul 20, 2022)

The most annoying thing in Kontakt is trying to load a library when you don't know on which SSD it's located. This Kontakt browser is such a mess. I constantly have to jump between the OS search function in an extra window outside the DAW to locate a library and jump back to the DAW to open the same path in tiny tiny tiny fonts in a differently sorted browser inside of Kontakt in an MS DOS looking tab.

And yes, clicking on the wrench should open a usable, scaleable, and well designed window (without touching the GUI of existing libraries at all).

When collaborating with other Kontakt users and exchanging DAW projects Kontakt never finds the the exact same installed libraries on other computers. You have to open every f...ing used Kontakt instance in the project and click on "search spotlight". Every f...ing time.

And finally: Kontakt should avoid blowing DAW projects into gigabyte size when using a lot of instances. 

I know all that isn't easy but other developers don't have this problems at all. This are Kontakt exclusively home made problems.


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## Tag (Jul 20, 2022)

gsilbers said:


> Germans love tiny fonts.


How else are we supposed to get all the fine print into compact texts? ... with our billions of laws and regulations, urghs. xD


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## pinki (Jul 21, 2022)

I went through MaxMsp 3 to 4 to 5 to 6.

They completely redesigned their gui every time and it drove me bonkers. Cycling 74 were obsessed with forever tweaking things and moving things and changing the colour and basically pissing around with it. I gave it up…as if Max wasn’t complex enough already.

So at least Kontakt doesn’t do this….

Saying that, I did struggle when they went from K3 to K4 …I loved K3’s interface! But that was 400 years ago.


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## EvilDragon (Jul 21, 2022)

Saxer said:


> When collaborating with other Kontakt users and exchanging DAW projects Kontakt never finds the the exact same installed libraries on other computers. You have to open every f...ing used Kontakt instance in the project and click on "search spotlight". Every f...ing time.


Is this for non-Player libraries? Becuase Kontakt Player libraries have paths in registry/plist and are referenced directly through that. You and everyone else who do collaborative projects with Kontakt should start using this option that was introduced in K6.6:






And then your projects would be perfectly portable between machines (even Mac vs PC), as long as all libraries within this base path have exactly the same layout/folder names etc. You can do this with symlinks, on Mac possibly aliases would also work.


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## EvilDragon (Jul 21, 2022)

Saxer said:


> And finally: Kontakt should avoid blowing DAW projects into gigabyte size when using a lot of instances.


This is not going to change. The whole NKI, including paths to samples and all persistent variables the instrument is using absolutely HAS to be stored in the plugin state. Imagine this situation: NKIs you load in Kontakt are referenced by path instead of inlined. Now the library gets an update which completely changes the sound of it. Now all your projects which used the old version will sound different! That is not at all what you want, I am pretty damn sure. Stuff like this needs to be handled on a case by case basis. And so, NKI is embedded into the DAW project, exactly to be able to correctly recall your project, _even if the library got updated at some point with possibly breaking changes._

If you don't want your DAW projects to blow up in size, use VEPro to host all Kontakt instances externally, then share that template between all DAW projects. Then you only have it saved once and it only gets referenced via VEPro server plugin in the DAW project.


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## storyteller (Jul 21, 2022)

EvilDragon said:


> Is this for non-Player libraries? Becuase Kontakt Player libraries have paths in registry/plist and are referenced directly through that. You and everyone else who do collaborative projects with Kontakt should start using this option that was introduced in K6.6:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I didnt realize this feature existed, but now I am very excited. What if my libraries are spread across multiple hard drives? Can I separate out the paths with a semicolon or something similar?


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## rrichard63 (Jul 21, 2022)

Zhao Shen said:


> Kontakt's own GUI is independent of instrument GUIs and wouldn't necessarily break anything.


At a minimum, Kontakt dictates a minimum and maximum number of pixels (width and height) for the instrument GUI. I strongly suspect that it also dictates bit-mapped rather than vector graphics. There might be other contraints as well.


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## AlexRuger (Jul 21, 2022)

As a user, I think Kontakt is fine. It's stuck around for a long time for a reason. While I find a lot of the "wrench" UX absolutely horrible -- all the "tab-looking things as buttons," like Mod and Group Start Options are absolute failures of UX, no doubt about it -- as long as you don't delve too deep, it's cool.

As a developer, Kontakt is absurdly, absurdly bad. Creator Tools was a totally inadequate band-aid. I am so tired of trying to efficiently work in Kontakt that, for all freelance projects moving forward (i.e. projects where I have a say in what sampler to use), I'm recommending HISE 100%. The developer experience is lightyears better.

I know I'm not alone in this, and is ultimately why I think it would behoove NI to take criticism of Kontakt extremely seriously. Losing users is kind of immaterial, because they're there for the libraries, not the sampler they run in. But losing developers = losing libraries, and thus losing users, albeit very slowly. I would wager that NI's biggest source of income is Komplete, and as Kontakt ever-so-slowly becomes something in which you primarily run NI first-party libraries, Komplete becomes a whole hell of a lot less interesting. The first-party libraries are cool but they're hardly any pro's first choice. Massive (X), Absynth, Reaktor...they're all fantastic, but also currently out-classed by the straight up renaissance of synthesis we're currently living through.

I understand that Kontakt is in many ways unchangeable, and that's unfortunate, but also that's business -- deal with it as best you can, or suffer the consequences. And seeing as a few of the biggest sample library developers have already abandoned Kontakt in favor of their own proprietary samplers (which...are also pretty bad in their own ways, but that's another thread), this shift is clearly already underway and has been for a while.

And that's not even getting into the other criticisms I have for the other apps in their ecosystem you have to deal with, primarily Native Access. That too is an utter failure of UX (the biggest issues being so glaring, and their fixes so obvious and easy fixes in terms of development, I am constantly blown away at how much NI has allowed NA to die on the vine).

The writing on the wall is that a closed-source near-monopoly on samplers simply will not continue to be developers' first choice for very much longer, even in spite of the crazy strong foothold Kontakt has held for two decades. They will either move to their own closed-source sampler (IMO a bad choice) or coalesce around an open-source alternative (IMO the much better choice from literally every angle). It's not doom for NI, they're honestly probably too big to fail and have diversified enough as it is, and that's without even talking about SoundWide. But it probably does spell even less money/attention pointed in the way of Kontakt -- developers abandon ship, so improving it becomes even less of a business priority, and thus the downward spiral goes.


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## Phazma (Jul 21, 2022)

I'm not a developer so I can't talk about that but otherwise I share every word of @AlexRuger 's post. 
Kontakt is a great, powerful piece of software and for day to day use with libraries I think it's absolutely fine - but for editing samples in the wrench part it's terrible. And I also agree, as a user you usually use whatever platform your library of choice runs on. If Kontakt doesn't do anything to keep devs it will lose its industry standard status as sample player someday. And I (like probably many others) would hate to have all libraries scattered across different plugins with different workflows. 

And NI Access also drives me crazy. While I find it mostly a nice concept to license, download, update and manage libraries all in one app there is this issue (on mac) where it asks for free space on the internal drive, sometimes even 3x the library size (and not accounting for purgeable space). For me, using a macbook pro with only 250GB drive, relying on external drives for storage, sometimes it means even if I deleted or moved everything I still wouldn't have enough space. Several times I had to contact the library developers after purchase to send me a direct link for installation bypassing Access.


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## aaronventure (Jul 21, 2022)

storyteller said:


> I didnt realize this feature existed, but now I am very excited. What if my libraries are spread across multiple hard drives? Can I separate out the paths with a semicolon or something similar?


Use symbolic links to virtually put all the folders into one. Then reference that folder in Kontakt options.





__





Link Shell Extension






schinagl.priv.at





Just in case it's not obvious, this is Windows only.

Symbolic links differ from shortcuts because they allow files to be referenced using the path that they would have if the folder was actually located in that location. So you create a folder Kontakt Libraries on your D:\ drive, and after installing this extension, navigate to all of your spread out Kontakt folders, and one by one, you right click, click Pick Link Source, go back to your Kontakt Libraries folder, right click and Drop As > Symbolic Link. If you now enter the folder, you will be browsing the folder you initially picked, which might be on a different drive, but notice that the path is displayed as if it was in that folder, specifically D:\Kontakt Libraries\Folder.


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## storyteller (Jul 21, 2022)

aaronventure said:


> Use symbolic links to virtually put all the folders into one. Then reference that folder in Kontakt options.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks. That is a great solution for Windows users. I am on Mac though. I have tried symbolic linking on Mac in the past, but it didn’t seem to work with Kontakt libraries.

Back in early 2017 when I decided to consolidate my workflow/template design process into OTR and release it, I tried creating an app for Mac that would consolidate all sample libraries spread across drives so that there could be a universal standard for creating daw templates across user‘s systems. But I couldn’t find a solution - including symbolic linking - that worked. Maybe that has been resolved now. In 2017 I thought that type of app would be a huge benefit to the community and be a profitable venture. Unfortunately, there were all types of Apple security hurdles that impeded that process.


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## EvilDragon (Jul 21, 2022)

Symbolic links should definitely work on Mac, it's a Unix thing, it has to work (and Kontakt resolves symlinks no problem). While it's usually done in Terminal, there are apps that add these options to Finder's context menu (much like Link Shell Extension on Win).









Releases · nickzman/symboliclinker


A contextual menu plugin & service for macOS that allows users to make symbolic links in the Finder - nickzman/symboliclinker




github.com


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## AlexRuger (Jul 21, 2022)

For anyone wondering, making symbolic links, it's dead simple:

`ln -s /path/to/where/the/data/lives/ /path/to/symbolic/link/location`

Only thing to be wary of is that, if the source is a folder and not a file, you need the trailing slash (i.e. notice that the first path ends with / and the second one doesn't).

That's it. A little bit of command line knowledge goes a long way!


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