Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol/Maschine now Apple Silicon Native (barely)

[eBlue]

Native Instruments has finally released their first attempt at native Apple Silicon support for Komplete Kontrol and Maschine 2. After all of this time I was really hoping that they were taking their time to get it right.

Sadly, both releases kompletely miss the mark with almost no backwards compatibility. The new M1-native versions will only recognize and load VST3 plugins with support for VST2 completely non-existent.

This essentially means that most of the already available third-party NKS content no longer functions since most of it was created using VST2 plugin versions. So goodbye to NKS content from many of the standout companies that made the effort to support NKS such as Arturia, KORG, Rob Papen, Spitfire and many others. I'm afraid that this could actually be the death of NKS.

What is amazing is that a small one-man operation like PluginGuru's Unify is able to release a native Apple Silicon host which includes integrated bridging for VST,VST3 and AU support for non-Apple Silicon plugins. Meanwhile a company the size of Native Instruments releases two of the most anti-climatic updates of the decade.

In a nutshell, unless you're using Komplete Kontrol and/or Maschine only with Native Instruments included plugins there is very little reason to get excited about this release.

[kidslow]

KK crashes with a segmentation fault on unsigned plugins that are able to load in other hosts. Running the xattr command does not clear the problem. Looking at the crash report and removing the suspect plugins did fix it. Applications should never crash with a seg fault though. Poor internal error handling.

Really half-baked.

NKS installed along with VST3 plugins from the following vendors fail both in Native and Rosetta mode, using KK standalone and relaunching & rescanning:
- Arturia, Plogue, U-he.

I do not typically have VSTs installed for those plugins, just VST3. I installed the chipspeech VST and tested if the NKS templates might work if I had VST+VST3 both, and it worked only when run in Rosetta mode. Even though all these plugins are native! Otherwise it errors out with "[plugin name] could not be loaded."

Mind you, if you ignore the left panel and load the VST3 plugin up top, you can do that just fine, Rosetta or Native don't matter. Just the nksf templates that are so wonky.

VST3 from AAS, Waves & Inphonik work Native mode. I was also able to get some downloaded NKS to install in the user content folder, including for Vital in Native mode VST3 and for Sonic Charge in Rosetta mode with VST. It seems very hit and miss. More miss than hit!

[Grumbleweed]

It not great on a PC either. Komplete Kontrol stalled whilst scanning my plugins - just sat there not moving on from Izotope Beat Twerker (or something like that). I'll look tonight to see if there's a pop up behind the loading screen. If not then Twerker gonna go.

Grum.

[ozinga]

This essentially means that most of the already available third-party NKS content no longer functions since most of it was created using VST2 plugin versions. So goodbye to NKS content from many of the standout companies that made the effort to support NKS such as Arturia, KORG, Rob Papen, Spitfire and many others. I'm afraid that this could actually be the death of NKS.

What is amazing is that a small one-man operation like PluginGuru's Unify is able to release a native Apple Silicon host which includes integrated bridging for VST,VST3 and AU support for non-Apple Silicon plugins. Meanwhile a company the size of Native Instruments releases two of the most anti-climatic updates of the decade.

YES I am confused when I tried to load U-he, Arturia stuff and got the migration error message. Never thought of NKS content connection to VST2 versions. Thanks to one user in NI forum enlightened me about it.
On the other hand NI rep told me to ask U-he and Arturia, without explaining what is going on. How convenient.
If Plugin Guru can make it, why not NI?
If I were those companies I would not have anything to do with NKS anymore.

[ericj23]

Native Instruments has finally released their first attempt at native Apple Silicon support for Komplete Kontrol and Maschine 2. After all of this time I was really hoping that they were taking their time to get it right.

Sadly, both releases kompletely miss the mark with almost no backwards compatibility. The new M1-native versions will only recognize and load VST3 plugins with support for VST2 completely non-existent.

This essentially means that most of the already available third-party NKS content no longer functions since most of it was created using VST2 plugin versions. So goodbye to NKS content from many of the standout companies that made the effort to support NKS such as Arturia, KORG, Rob Papen, Spitfire and many others. I'm afraid that this could actually be the death of NKS.

What is amazing is that a small one-man operation like PluginGuru's Unify is able to release a native Apple Silicon host which includes integrated bridging for VST,VST3 and AU support for non-Apple Silicon plugins. Meanwhile a company the size of Native Instruments releases two of the most anti-climatic updates of the decade.

In a nutshell, unless you're using Komplete Kontrol and/or Maschine only with Native Instruments included plugins there is very little reason to get excited about this release.

Quite a lot of NI's own NKSF don't work either - Reaktor is not VST3, Neither is Massive etc. This just seems like really stupid release to make - do the plug-ins first and the hosts later

[Urs]

On the other hand NI rep told me to ask U-he and Arturia, without explaining what is going on. How convenient.

We have been in touch with NI recently and they assured us that our stuff would continue to work. Obviously that is not the case

[m-ac]

I was KKs biggest advocate, but now after it not working with silicon for 2 years so avoiding it in any projects since, I'm 100% over it and wont touch it with a bargepole. Well done NI, you played yourself once again.

[wulisu]

Thanks, NI for nothing! I have been waiting two years for the proper Silicone support. Arturia did it and lots of other brands. Today I can't use Arturia or other synths including their NI own like TRK, Super 8, Prism, Polyplex, Massive , Monarch, Form, Razor Flesh, Battery, FM8 and more. I spend lots of money on the Ultimate pack, no more. That's enough for me.

[spacepluk]

fwiw it’s working great with all my stuff from u-he, arturia and spitfire…

[kidslow]

fwiw it’s working great with all my stuff from u-he, arturia and spitfire…

In Rosetta mode or not? With VST and VST3 installed or just VST3?

[rod_zero]

You are telling me a wrapper (KK) has broken with an OS update? along its functionality with older plugins? what a surprise, I would never have expected it.

[apoclypse]

Native Instruments has finally released their first attempt at native Apple Silicon support for Komplete Kontrol and Maschine 2. After all of this time I was really hoping that they were taking their time to get it right.

Sadly, both releases kompletely miss the mark with almost no backwards compatibility. The new M1-native versions will only recognize and load VST3 plugins with support for VST2 completely non-existent.

This essentially means that most of the already available third-party NKS content no longer functions since most of it was created using VST2 plugin versions. So goodbye to NKS content from many of the standout companies that made the effort to support NKS such as Arturia, KORG, Rob Papen, Spitfire and many others. I'm afraid that this could actually be the death of NKS.

What is amazing is that a small one-man operation like PluginGuru's Unify is able to release a native Apple Silicon host which includes integrated bridging for VST,VST3 and AU support for non-Apple Silicon plugins. Meanwhile a company the size of Native Instruments releases two of the most anti-climatic updates of the decade.

In a nutshell, unless you're using Komplete Kontrol and/or Maschine only with Native Instruments included plugins there is very little reason to get excited about this release.

Quite a lot of NI's own NKSF don't work either - Reaktor is not VST3, Neither is Massive etc. This just seems like really stupid release to make - do the plug-ins first and the hosts later

How else would they sell overpriced hardware. I think there were some major issues with KK and Maschine on AS macs reported on the NI forums over the year or so. In typical NI fashion they half ass it to stop users from dumping NI and looking elsewhere. I recently bought a Maschine+ dirt cheap from someone who was fed up.

[aMUSEd]

Native Instruments has finally released their first attempt at native Apple Silicon support for Komplete Kontrol and Maschine 2. After all of this time I was really hoping that they were taking their time to get it right.

Sadly, both releases kompletely miss the mark with almost no backwards compatibility. The new M1-native versions will only recognize and load VST3 plugins with support for VST2 completely non-existent.

This essentially means that most of the already available third-party NKS content no longer functions since most of it was created using VST2 plugin versions. So goodbye to NKS content from many of the standout companies that made the effort to support NKS such as Arturia, KORG, Rob Papen, Spitfire and many others. I'm afraid that this could actually be the death of NKS.

What is amazing is that a small one-man operation like PluginGuru's Unify is able to release a native Apple Silicon host which includes integrated bridging for VST,VST3 and AU support for non-Apple Silicon plugins. Meanwhile a company the size of Native Instruments releases two of the most anti-climatic updates of the decade.

In a nutshell, unless you're using Komplete Kontrol and/or Maschine only with Native Instruments included plugins there is very little reason to get excited about this release.

This is very misleading and one sided. The transition from Intel to Apple Silicon, coinciding with an equally complex transition (given NKS dependence on VST2) was a challenging one and NI have done a brilliant job of managing this, first incrementally with their own plugins to ensure control over the process and now with third party VST3 support. All NI native plugins migrate from VST2 NKS to VST3 NKS, so do the non native ones, using Rosetta 2 (mainly just Massive X and Reaktor - neither of which is an easy convert - especially given MPX's dependancy on AVX2). What is more amazing is NI have built into KK and Maschine a framework for non NI plugins to also migrate from VST2 based NKS to VST3 based NKS and many plugins can already do this. Those that I have tested that can do this already include plugins from:

NI (obviously)
AAS (all plugins)
Vital
UVI (Falcon and Drone)
TAL (tested with TAL Mod however the version I tested did seem unstable on AS but that might be on TAL)
SugarBytes
SPC (Arcsyn)
Audiodamage (Quanta but not Phosphor)
Plugin Alliance
iZotope
Expressive E
Modartt (Pianoteq)
Valhalla dsp
Synthmaster One and 2
FAW Circle 2

there are many VST2 plugins that don't migrate yet but the framework is there, however it also requires plugin developers to implement VST2 to 3 migration (which clearly some have done in advance of NI). Those that don't include u-he and Arturia (NKS partners so hopefully for them they can work with NI to implement this more quickly) and a number of other developers who are not so for them it may be slower (eg Spectrasonics). However the positive is we now have VST3 support which opens KK and NKS up to a whole world of newer exciting VST3 only plugins such as Plasmonic, KORG Wavestate, and OPSix native, Noise Engineering plugins, and Surge XT (which I have already shared templates for controlling these with KK and creating NKS presets for) so there is certainly much to get excited about this release, I was looking forwards to being able to use these plugins in Komplete Kontrol for ages. NKS is not at all on its last legs, it has a whole new lease of life.

Given that Massive X and Reaktor are still not Native it's no surprise to run those you still need Rosetta, I have KK running in some hosts with Rosetta on and others with it off (mainly Logic and Bitwig as both also have good bridging for intel plugins). This is a huge step forwards and KK/Maschine run blazing fast now on my Mac Studio Max, but it's frustrating that all some people can do is focus on the negatives and not appreciate the hard work that went into this and the extent of this achievement.

[ozinga]

it's frustrating that all some people can do is focus on the negatives and not appreciate the hard work that went into this and the extent of this achievement.

What you do not understand is, U-he says that NI promised that they would continue VST2 support and they are surprised that it is not the case. So they got caught off guard with NKS implementation without all NKS content ready with VST3 versions. So it is not just pointless negativity. It is how NI kept developers out of the loop.

Here is the excerpt from the mail I got from U-He;

"It still amazes us that they abandoned VST2 support on Silicon Macs without notifying
third party developer about this.
The whole NKS technology was based on VST2 up until now, so this move comes quite
unexpected."

[machinesworking]

it's frustrating that all some people can do is focus on the negatives and not appreciate the hard work that went into this and the extent of this achievement.

What you do not understand is, U-he says that NI promised that they would continue VST2 support and they are surprised that it is not the case. So they got caught off guard with NKS implementation without all NKS content ready with VST3 versions. So it is not just pointless negativity. It is how NI kept developers out of the loop.

Here is the excerpt from the mail I got from U-He;

"It still amazes us that they abandoned VST2 support on Silicon Macs without notifying
third party developer about this.
The whole NKS technology was based on VST2 up until now, so this move comes quite
unexpected."

How unexpected can it be with Steinberg aggressively denying new licenses for VST2? It's obvious that no one likes VST3 in the developer community, but Steinberg have the final say here. It's why CLAP came around, but it will be a decade probably before NI supports CLAP.