Refused Activation - Kontakt 3

[Hutzpah]

I very recently reinstalled my studio’s software including Kontakt 3; only to have the hard drive fail after booting up only three times. So I thought “that stinks” and went and did it all over again.
On my next attempt Native Instruments Kontakt 3 would not activate off line.
So I wrote to them and received this reply.

“Sorry but Kontakt 3 is not supported anymore (since 2009). You can update it to Kontakt 5.
Don't hesitate to contact us if you need further assistance.”

I wrote back but have not received a reply. This situation is a killer as I have a 19 song album unreleased (I know its big but I didn't know when to stop!). Also I have started a new project with 3 songs close to completion all using kontakt 3.5.

This is annoying as all my software is legal including guitar rig pro 5 and Cubase 5. And yes I did buy cubase 5 for over $300.00 if I remember rightly.
To update to Kontakt 5 I will need to update Cubase and buy another computer as the Mac pro 1 2.66 GHz maximum OSX is 10.7.5 and Kontakt requires OSX 10.11.
To be honest, I am happy with the studio set up as it is.

Very interested to hear your thoughts?

Hutzpah

[jancivil]

Yeah, I have more or less been here with NI and updating. I really liked 2011 and Snow Leopard which was probably the high point of Mac OS but around 2015 I finally had to move on. Because things I really wanted to use required higher Kontakt than I had, this was the actual reason for the sea change (NB: I used Cubase 5.5.3 thru 2015).

I say move on and get with the present or at least something more viable than what you're doing.

I got Kore 2 installed on this system, a bit of a chore as it is so old its installer takes OSX.10 as 10.1 and you have to alter the installer to where it believes it's writing to 10.4 [or above, just not 10.10., 10.11 etc] to even install it.
THEN one day, and I have_no_earthly_idea [no, probably cleaned system cache] donno what happened, it was in demo mode and Service Center produced this mystery error trying to activate it and that was all she wrote.
It f**ked me up as I had projects saved with things in Kore that do not exist quite outside it. So I'm done. I'm done fugging with all of that.

[Hutzpah]

Hi jancivil

Thinking this through ... thank goodness at least I bounced down the samplers’ parts onto an audio track. I can work with that.

The whole thing has been going around and around in my head. Unsettling thinking what to do.
I thought of jumping over to Linux as I use it for Blender. But as I don’t play keys, I like to write parts in score and can not do this in Ardour or qtrackor.


Anyway after hours of thinking and Googling for the best solution. I found a sfz player called Sforzando which is compatible with OSX 10.6.8.
It installed no problems and its working well.
It takes sfz files as well as sf2 files. Just need to spend some time and put together a small sample library then I can continue to work on the next project.
The piggy banks too low to lay out on computers and more software.

[jancivil]

Are you using a Service Center of that vintage? If not, I would get ahold of that and try.

[Hutzpah]

Jancivil, it's all sorted they got back to me.

Well, after resigning myself to the fact that the “end of kontakt 3” had arrived.
I recently received a email from Native Intruments saying:

“the offline activation is no longer supported.
But we generated the 'activation keys' for your products.”

I literally entered the code a few minutes ago and its working.
A big thanks to Native Instruments from me.

Thanks again everyone for your feedback, I thought it fair to NI to report that my story
had a happy ending.

In the meantime I have also managed to hunt down some nice SFZ, SF2 samples and VST Intruments. I am going to spend the rest of the day working on a song.

Davyd

[Jace-BeOS]

Jancivil, it's all sorted they got back to me.

Well, after resigning myself to the fact that the “end of kontakt 3” had arrived.
I recently received a email from Native Intruments saying:

“the offline activation is no longer supported.
But we generated the 'activation keys' for your products.”

I literally entered the code a few minutes ago and its working.
A big thanks to Native Instruments from me.

Thanks again everyone for your feedback, I thought it fair to NI to report that my story
had a happy ending.

Fair indeed, thanks for doing so. i am glad to hear NI gave you this solution. i hope they continue to do so for others in this position.

i am still on Snow Leopard, Logic 9.x, and Kontakt 3. i would be livid if NI were to just tell me one day "no, we're not going to authorize you to use the product you paid for until you pay us more money, pay Apple more money for Logic X, and pay numerous other companies more money to upgrade your other plugins, and pay yet more companies for new audio interface hardware to replace the expensive M-Audio interface/control surface that was abandoned suddenly by Avid/M-Audio"...

Forcing me to upgrade ONE product literally results in forcing me to upgrade MANY others and buy new hardware. i'm effing POOR!

[jancivil]

My MacPro is probably dead. So in order to keep working on music I adapted. I am currently using a 2011 MacBook Pro and Sierra, everything is current. I resisted Kontakt 5 for so long but it's what there is; once you move on up, it's critical mass just from upping Kontakt and I felt I had to. I bought a machine last year which to restore it required me to go to the first Snow Leopard. I did not like it Sam I Am. Systems, = ecosystems.

[jancivil]

i would be livid if NI were to just tell me one day "no, we're not going to authorize you to use the product you paid for until you pay us more money,

I wouldn't stand for it. I would expect them to be like that at all. They worked with me on something far more involved and sorted me. Unlike certain others...

[Jace-BeOS]

My MacPro is probably dead. So in order to keep working on music I adapted. I am currently using a 2011 MacBook Pro and Sierra, everything is current. I resisted Kontakt 5 for so long but it's what there is; once you move on up, it's critical mass just from upping Kontakt and I felt I had to. I bought a machine last year which to restore it required me to go to the first Snow Leopard. I did not like it Sam I Am. Systems, = ecosystems.

Sorry about your Mac Pro being dead. i considered buying one second hand but my priority was a larger display and opted for a used iMac as my interim computer (13" Macbook Pro is too small). i have a nest egg for a new machine and that'll be the last computer i buy for the rest of my life, probably. i've been waiting for Apple to put out a proper pro machine, and the iMac Pro isn't it. But the interim iMac i bought was explicitly chosen for Snow Leopard compatibility. i wanted to clone my MacBook Pro drive and get back to work (and that's how it went, though i did have to re-authorize most of my software).

i love Snow Leopard. Boots, sleeps, wakes, and shuts down very quickly. No bloat. The only feature i care about in newer versions (that Snow Leopard lacks) is the full screen apps/workspaces. i love that. If Snow Leopard had that, there'd be no other feature i need added. Right now i'm using Snow Leopard for most of my music and photography work. i still use various pieces of abandoned software with my studio. It pisses me off when hardware makers stop at version 1.01 of their "computer integration" features. Korg and Roland never ported numerous hardware editors/librarians to Intel, let alone 64-bit. High Sierra is the last stand for 32-bit and Snow Leopard was the last stand for PPC (yet, ironically, there's no Snow Leopard for PPC machines). i have to keep a machine with Snow Leopard, one way or another, regardless. Hell, i have a little junky PPC Macbook dedicated to my Akai S6000 and Akai's old AkSys software. Almost never use it, but i paid $1000 for that monstrous second-hand sampler and it has gigabytes of samples on it designed for it, so...

i'm toying with El Capitan (it's not a bad OS, really, and i'm enjoying the ecosystem between it and my newer iOS devices, but it is definitely bloated and Safari is buggy). Adobe CS6 is... troubled on it, which is a problem, since Photoshop is one of my primary tools and no way in hell am i going to subscribe to Adobe CC.

Migrating is painful. i've already migrated from Sonar/Windows to Logic/Mac. i lost plugins and rendered things to audio to do so. So now i get to do it again: i will be buying Logic X this/next month (birthday money, sigh) so i can start migrating my projects and feeling out what is involved in that. i need to get Logic X soon, as expect they'll cut El Capitan support soon. i could go to High Sierra on my iMac, but not even Sierra on my MacBook Pro. i want to keep both of my systems at parity for now because they're serving as data backups of each other and whatnot.

Once on Logic X, i'll need to render to audio and ditch some abandoned plugins (hey ReFX, please update Quadra SID!!) and update the rest. It'll be somewhere between $600-$800. Luckily i don't have a huge collection of 3rd party plugins! If not for having so little cash at one time, i'd consider upgrading my NI software to Komplete and get more for less, but doing the individual upgrades with a smaller cash outlay each time is more my speed. Poor people spend more money in the end.

With the requirement to disable SIP and follow arcane instructions to do a hacky installation of the M-Audio Firewire driver on El Cap or newer, i'm not liking the outlook. i'm thinking of ditching the M-Audio interface/surface instead of risking the hack (the driver also causes a kernel panic if you disconnect the device, which is not what Firewire is about). My TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32 is supported in El Cap, but it has no analog inputs. This is going to be a very expensive migration, between software and hardware changes.

i'm thinking of getting an Art Digital MPA II preamp for two channels of analog input (it outputs digital, which can plug into my TC Electronic interface). $400. Downside is that the TC unit has a lot of computer electrical noise on its outputs which i just don't want to listen to (it's a decent independent digital router otherwise).

i've been looking at the Behringer XTouch to replace my control surface. Maybe i don't need it, but i really like having a jog wheel and dedicated transport controls. $400.

i'm thinking if i start this process now, it'll be less money to lay out all at one time when (if??) Apple releases a proper new Mac Pro.

So, yeah... NI and others need to keep authorizing their older products for a while yet...

[jancivil]

My MacPro is probably dead. So in order to keep working on music I adapted. I am currently using a 2011 MacBook Pro and Sierra, everything is current. I resisted Kontakt 5 for so long but it's what there is; once you move on up, it's critical mass just from upping Kontakt and I felt I had to. I bought a machine last year which to restore it required me to go to the first Snow Leopard. I did not like it Sam I Am. Systems, = ecosystems.

Sorry about your Mac Pro being dead. i considered buying one second hand but my priority was a larger display and opted for a used iMac as my interim computer (13" Macbook Pro is too small). i have a nest egg for a new machine and that'll be the last computer i buy for the rest of my life, probably. i've been waiting for Apple to put out a proper pro machine, and the iMac Pro isn't it. But the interim iMac i bought was explicitly chosen for Snow Leopard compatibility. i wanted to clone my MacBook Pro drive and get back to work (and that's how it went, though i did have to re-authorize most of my software).

i love Snow Leopard. Boots, sleeps, wakes, and shuts down very quickly. No bloat.

The mature SL, 10.6.8 is the high point from which Apple is likely to continue to fall from. 10.6.0 or whatever it was, not so much. Not on that machine anyhoo.

Yeah, 13" is too small. I'm using it though.

The big computer may be salvageable. It'll cost money to find out however. It doesn't power up. The display (Apple Cinema 24) has no power which was the cause of my incessant attempts to force it to start which killed the celenoid switch (clearly I have no idea what the part is called).
If it does start it will start with 10.8.5 and Kontakt 4 installed.

[jancivil]

With the requirement to disable SIP and follow arcane instructions to do a hacky installation of the M-Audio Firewire driver on El Cap or newer, i'm not liking the outlook. i'm thinking of ditching the M-Audio interface/surface instead of risking the hack (the driver also causes a kernel panic if you disconnect the device, which is not what Firewire is about). My TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32 is supported in El Cap, but it has no analog inputs. This is going to be a very expensive migration, between software and hardware changes.

Speakin' o' stabs from the past, MFuckingAudio. It's time, ditch it.

[Jace-BeOS]

With the requirement to disable SIP and follow arcane instructions to do a hacky installation of the M-Audio Firewire driver on El Cap or newer, i'm not liking the outlook. i'm thinking of ditching the M-Audio interface/surface instead of risking the hack (the driver also causes a kernel panic if you disconnect the device, which is not what Firewire is about). My TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32 is supported in El Cap, but it has no analog inputs. This is going to be a very expensive migration, between software and hardware changes.

Speakin' o' stabs from the past, MFuckingAudio. It's time, ditch it.

Replacing it with... what? My TC Electronic Digital Konnekt appears to still be supported but it lacks analog input and i like the control surface on my ProjectMix I/O. i've considered the Art MPA II Digital preamp (digital out would go into my Digital Konnekt) and Behringer's XTouch for control surface. But that is $800+ i need to spend...

[ATS]

wow and you didn't even change title...

Jancivil, it's all sorted they got back to me.

Well, after resigning myself to the fact that the “end of kontakt 3” had arrived.
I recently received a email from Native Intruments saying:

“the offline activation is no longer supported.
But we generated the 'activation keys' for your products.”

I literally entered the code a few minutes ago and its working.
A big thanks to Native Instruments from me.

Thanks again everyone for your feedback, I thought it fair to NI to report that my story
had a happy ending.

In the meantime I have also managed to hunt down some nice SFZ, SF2 samples and VST Intruments. I am going to spend the rest of the day working on a song.

Davyd