Native Instruments - Komplete 15

[bulevardi]

I sold GR7 a while ago via the bargains section on this forum.
NI didn't even react to my support questions and closed the threads, even without a polite 'no'.
Glad I got rid of this...

Overloud is doing a great job as replacement, very stable and lightweight.

[knwr]

I remember when I used Massive as my daily driver. It seems like, from the intervening years, there are better options for synthesizers. It would be nice if Kontakt has been sped up a lot.

[Serhii Kot]

No multi output in Leap? What a shame...

[ralfrobert]

I would get Standard first and go from there. You can also check the second hand market. In my opinion, Ultimate is good if you need it for work and have no intention to invest in third party Kontakt stuff at first. So it depends on the money you have. Also, take the future update costs into account right now.

[Scoops]

Anyone using the Ultimate bundle here? Im just starting to sound design and dunno which bundle to go with.

I have an ultimate bundle.
Biggest mistake I've ever made.
I purchased an ultimate bundle in hopes that I'd be able to use Choir Omnia. This is a waste of hard drive space due to the very poor selection of syllables available for use.

Depending on what you'd like to do, just do some research. There are plenty of other options out there.

My advice is that you walk away from NI. Support is horrid. Products are old and outdated. And the forum mods and NI Fanboys are simply hostile

[noiseboyuk]

I have an ultimate bundle.
Biggest mistake I've ever made.
I purchased an ultimate bundle in hopes that I'd be able to use Choir Omnia. This is a waste of hard drive space due to the very poor selection of syllables available for use.

Depending on what you'd like to do, just do some research. There are plenty of other options out there.

My advice is that you walk away from NI. Support is horrid. Products are old and outdated. And the forum mods and NI Fanboys are simply hostile

Omnia is indeed a total waste of space for me too, it's incredibly disappointing. BUT I don't think that about every other product in the bundle. Some are fantastic.

[Scoops]

I have an ultimate bundle.
Biggest mistake I've ever made.
I purchased an ultimate bundle in hopes that I'd be able to use Choir Omnia. This is a waste of hard drive space due to the very poor selection of syllables available for use.

Depending on what you'd like to do, just do some research. There are plenty of other options out there.

My advice is that you walk away from NI. Support is horrid. Products are old and outdated. And the forum mods and NI Fanboys are simply hostile

Omnia is indeed a total waste of space for me too, it's incredibly disappointing. BUT I don't think that about every other product in the bundle. Some are fantastic.

Well yeah, there are some good things. Like the Cremona strings. But with them being tied to Kontakt, there's the whole library issue with the versions. I have since moved to Spitfire where I don't have to worry about Spitfire forcing me to upgrade.

I have found out how to turn off Native Access so it doesn't automatically update my libraries without me knowing about it. The computer I have NI loaded on will shortly become a standalone, off the internet, and used only when I'd like to use Absynth, or Reaktor, or even Battery 3. There are so many things NI is putting to end of life as well.

Again, unless you have a plan to dedicate an offline computer for saving your NI stuff, I'd stay away for it.

[jancivil]

Anyone using the Ultimate bundle here?

I have an ultimate bundle.
Biggest mistake I've ever made.

My advice is that you walk away from NI. Support is horrid. Products are old and outdated. And the forum mods and NI Fanboys are simply hostile

Support is really not good and they deliberately changed their website to obscure how to even get to support. Recently it was easier, I'm not sure if something was changed or if I'm familiar now.
I've not needed support for a long, long time until late in 2024. Native Access here (it's not an infinitesimally small chance it's something in my system but I quite doubt it because the culprit is well known, and to people that understand it code-wise: aria 2 (c)

source may not support.png

# aria2(c) is shit.png

"Source" = Native Access; also Vienna Assistant and Steinberg Download Assistant. I ran this by VSL support and they recognize the issue.

I have another issue that begins with the release of Kontakt 8 that's never been one. I have things activated via two diff. emails so these are not seen except when logged into the secondary address. Kontakt 8 cannot use several things I have licensed that have never been a problem.
This one I got a ticket through. But being pragmatic, do I need to be using Kontakt 8? No, these all work in Kontakt 6. I choose not to buy into this.

So they've gotten ridiculous, these are both new issues and it looks like incompetence in decision-making.

All this said, 'move away from NI' means what? One should stop using things that work, that in my case have never not worked, on a platform that represents in many cases a lot of money invested and uses, that in my case are irreplaceable, nothing even close is made?
Does such a boycott send a message, and to whom?
Good grief.

[jancivil]

OTOH, if "move away from NI" were to mean stay away from future NI Kontakt libraries I would tend to agree. I'm staying away from using K7 in VE Pro because it's broken.

Per the above I just noticed that my request to SonicCouture (which makes things no one makes anything in any semblance of that I use frequently, so I am stuck with Kontakt for life) was fulfilled, so part of my stupid Native Access problem was solved. I still have one library that isn't theirs tied to the other email that works in K6 (or at least the nki I saved a K6 safety copy of does). It probably doesn't show in K8.

"how to turn off Native Access so it doesn't automatically update my libraries without me knowing about it."

Last year I mindlessly updated two things which no longer worked in Kontakt 6. Fortunately I found this:
https://community.native-instruments.co ... -libraries
which has installers for the older versions.

Here's one of them, which I have used in the past, though not for 5 or 6 yrs. (Today checking myself so as not to say things which are for whatever reason not true, I found that it was opening in K6 as Demo. This was a new problem, because last year when I went to install the older version it worked as expected. I downloaded it again, MacOS 14.7.2 acted like it couldn't be installed, but one persists and it did. Now it's ok. I don't know what happened in the interim exactly but there was probably an update of NA.)

here is what NA informs:

Minimum required version.png

and here is it in Kontakt 6:

In Kontakt 6.png

Finder tells me this older version was initially installed October 24 2024. NA has, unsurprisingly not updated it while I was not looking. It just doesn't work that way. That's insane, frankly.

[Scoops]

All this said, 'move away from NI' means what? One should stop using things that work, that in my case have never not worked, on a platform that represents in many cases a lot of money invested and uses, that in my case are irreplaceable, nothing even close is made?
Does such a boycott send a message, and to whom?
Good grief.

OK,

I have been a Komplete user since K2. I've purchased just about every update, except a couple. I updated to ultimate at K13, so I have a considerable investment. To protect my investment, I've done a few things.

First of all, I killed the NTK daemon at startup. This has prevented NI from auto-updating my apps without my knowledge. So for example, many many people have reported that all of a sudden, all of their installations have gone into demo mode.

Secondly, I have managed to get mostly everything I would want, need and or desire loaded and functioning on a computer. It wasn't easy. Really bad implementation of NA, and incredibly slow download times are the biggest issues. Absynth, and Reaktor were my 2 biggest worries as they are EOL, and not available from NI once they decide to turn it off. This computer will be taken off line, and only used for when I want to use NI product. I admit that I am fortunate enough to have the resources to be able to do this. Many people don't.

Last of all, I have completely abandoned any updates from NI once I got K14 up and running. Using Native Access is a disaster. From my first point, Native Access NTK daemon will run on your computer 100% of the time and do auto updates. Forget about doing updates once you get it all straightened out.

So for me, moving away from NI means
- No more purchases from NI
- Finding new alternatives
- Using NI stuff that I have saved off.

Finding new alternatives is a somewhat fun adventure though. Spitfire orchestral libraries are wonderful. I just make sure I don't get any of the libraries that require Kontakt. Also, while FM8 is a "go to" for FM synthesis, I'm concerned that this will be shut off soon as well. I kinda enjoy looking for new apps, and this one has a wide variety of players in the market. So as long as I remain patient, and purchase when on sale, I'll be good.

Cheers

Edit: I should also note that I have Izotope "Everything". While Izotope was my go to eq/mastering solution, their association to NI had me move to a different path, and Fabfilter works great.

[RobGee]

What’s all this talk of auto updates? Nothing on either of my systems updates unless I load Native Access, allow it to scan for updates and click the update button for each available update?

[Scoops]

What’s all this talk of auto updates? Nothing on either of my systems updates unless I load Native Access, allow it to scan for updates and click the update button for each available update?

Yep,

Many people have reported that all of a sudden, all of their apps have updated and gone into demo mode. There's no real rhyme or reason to this, and some people are not affected. Odd that NI can't get a handle on this as the issue has been around for quite some time.

Again, I've killed the NTK daemon so NA is never running in the background.

[Starbright]

Strange, I actually never had problems with their support. Not even once, even after I got accidentally charged for trying out their subscription service I got support within 6 hours and a refund the same. If you use the chatbot and ask it to have it taken to support stuff it should work.
When it comes to the last issue I had the same issue with other plugins (IK, Vital, Arturia), where after the last update some of my registrations weren't working.
Maybe it's a windows update problem.
When it comes to Kontakt 8 and 7 (which right now runs at lightning speed): after the last update they work fine.
(Win 11, Predator Helios from 2021, 18 GB RAM)

Tiny side edit:
I'm no fanboy, actually the Alicia Keys series is pretty unusable to me and Conflux pretty underwhelming.
Though I do like Leap - it even has a mode where you can play the samples chromatically.
I just miss a slice maping mode...

[SimpleScience]

Would purchasing Komplete 15 Standard and Ableton Live 12 Standard be better than purchasing Ableton Live 12 Suite for a beginner looking to record Rock, Dance and EDM music? Sorry if this post belongs elsewhere, I'm new to the forum.

[dellboy]

Would purchasing Komplete 15 Standard and Ableton Live 12 Standard be better than purchasing Ableton Live 12 Suite for a beginner looking to record Rock, Dance and EDM music? Sorry if this post belongs elsewhere, I'm new to the forum.

Download the Live Suite 30 day full demo and see if it is enough for you.

https://www.ableton.com/en/trial/