KOMPLETE 12 & 12 ULTIMATE Leak! Massive X Synthesizer, Kontakt 6...

[Scotty]

I'm liking the direction of NI on this round of updates speaking from an Ultimate 11 user looking at 12 Ultimate Collector's Edition. The Symphonic orchestral libraries are impressive and the expansion content looks useful. I may be able to unsubscribe to East West Play now with these libraries. The expansion content and the continued support of NKS makes searching, auditioning and tweaking the sounds pretty efficient. The entry into subscription with the acquisition of Loop Loft is less interesting to me but the overall direction is a good fit for my use. We'll all be looking forward to the landing of Massive X in February.

As long a NI continues to expand what Maschine can do and they start getting close to what Kore could do with Komplete Kontrol updates I can be satisfied with it. My two bits.

[dangayle]

I don’t even care if the GUI was resizeable, just include hidpi raster graphics so everything isn’t potato quality. On something like Razor, one of my favorite all time synths, it’s just sad.

[david.beholder]

Yep. Eventually it will happen, but not everything in Kontakt can be vector-based. All the libraries and scripted interfaces for them are using raster graphics - don't expect any changes there. Even if we get some sort of vector drawing in KSP, there's a metric shitton of libraries that would need updating, some of them very old and some of them even abandoned by devs, and for sure some devs just plain wouldn't be willing to update, and so on, and so on...

It's easy to scale raster graphics. There are multiple not fully vector but scalable approaches, I remember U-he is prerendering elements.

[EvilDragon]

Yes you can scale raster graphics but when you go from small to large you get a blurry mess. It works in u-he synths because they go from 2x side down, not the other way around. For Kontakt, it'd always be blurry mess because all the libraries start with smaller graphics.

[Captain]

Of course there are raster gfx scaling algorithms that try to keep important elements (like text) sharp & readable even when going from smaller to bigger, but not sure how feasible it would be to incorporate something like that into a plugin. And since there are also moving elements in Kontakt instrument interfaces, it would either require some pre-rendering, or using CPU for realtime scaling, which could soon lead to other kinds of problems, I guess. No easy solutions here.

[EvilDragon]

Exactly, there are no easy wins at all in this situation. Methinks the most likely scenario is that GUI gets scalable, library performance views don't, and the onus would be on the developers to update their GUIs to the larger size. Which is a maximum of 1000x750 currently, but it's also totally plausible that NI would increase that limit a few more times, in order to support HiDPI. And then cherry on the top would be being able to trigger a GUI resize from the script, so that we the developers can easily provide multiple GUI sizes for the products we're working on.

Red Room Audio Palette has a prototype of this feature, where the right side logo collapses to conserve some screen real estate, but it requires you to make a trip to Kontakt's top right corner and click the "!" button to restart the audio engine/reinitialize the script after you collapse/expand the GUI. Hell, if we could get a command in KSP to trigger a full engine reset from there (used with caution, of course), that'd be enough. But it'd be safer if we could just change set_ui_width_px()/height_px() dynamically from a button or menu UI callback...

[ians]

EvilDragon,
Would you say Kontskt is a victim of its own success? There must be 100s if not 1000s of libraries by now, & NI have to tread very carefully to keep compatibility.

Ian

[EvilDragon]

Backwards compatibility is priority #1 for NI, so even if GUI changes, you'll still be able to load all your libraries from previous versions. And yes, they would look exactly the same.

I wouldn't say Kontakt is a victim of its own success, it's more likely that it's a victim of a number of things happening within NI internally throughout the years.

[noiseboyuk]

Well, I've been mulling and digesting over the last couple of days. I think it's a good solid upgrade for me from 10U. However, it's not necessarily an immediately-must-have upgrade. I don't develop my own Kontakt instruments (beyond boring functional ones), so I'll be getting the secondary benefit of the Kontakt 6 stuff, which will take a little while to come. The new bundled libraries look ok but will overlap a lot of my existing stuff. Massive X could be great, who knows, but it's not here for several months anyway. Some nice other libraries that I'll likely get some use from, but none are in the "must have right now" zone.

So in short, I can wait a bit without much ill effect. Which in turn means I can wait til June '19 for the inevitable half price upgrade sale. That then becomes not just a pretty good deal, but an insanely good deal. Even though I'm pretty well stocked for orchestral, paying (potentially) only an extra £80 for the lot and a bunch of expansions (including those new Massive expansions, I see)... well come on now, even curmudgeonly old me would have to do it. In the meantime, if a great K6 library comes out, it's likely to be a Player one as well, so I could still buy it.

Ulitmately (!) resistance is futile, it always is. But the increasing predictability of NI's sales patterns mean for those who can wait, the best deals always lie ahead.

[rollasoc]

The entry into subscription with the acquisition of Loop Loft is less interesting to me

Be interesting to see for Komplete 13, whether the Loop Loft Kontakt drum instruments get bundled in or not for free. I'm assuming they will at least be updated to NKS in the near future (if they are not already).

[VitaminD]

GUI upgrading is where Native Instrument needs to focus its attention on. Across the entire line up.

Even if the dedicated software synths (not that Reaktor stuff) don't get a lot of sound engine upgrades, GUI upgrades would really be beneficial with screen resolutions increasing.

I'm so tired of NI throwing in more soundware shovelware into the package. It was the synths that made the company what it is... I wish they'd respect that more. I keep skipping upgrade versions because it is more junk added to the bundle that I never wanted. All I want are soft synth upgrades (and not tied to Reaktor or Kontakt).

[patchhunter]

I'm still on komplete 9 and I agree that gui updates and resolution should be the focus of Native instruments. That is part of the reason that I am still on k9. However even though I don't yet know the features or how massive x sounds I am a bit curious and will likely update at some point but I am in no rush due to like I said current products gui and stuff.

[digitalboytn]

It was the synths that made the company what it is... I wish they'd respect that more.

[Astralv]

I have 11U, how come I don't see any new sampled libraries or synths?

[machinesworking]

In a way I'm kinda glad it's a mediocre upgrade to me. I have 10 Ultimate and enough third party orchestral libraries to hold off on purchasing until Komplete 12CE is half off in a year or so.

What it does is make third party Maschine libraries that much more enticing if I can eventually get all of NI's offerings in UltimateCE. Not sure how good this game plan is on their part? but Ultimate is literally their bread and butter so...