Native Instruments - Kontakt 8

[glokraw]

Value will be different for each potential customer, depending on how one values various content. To me, the upgrade price has been justified by some of the new sound collections, and the phrase tool. Then there are Komplete upgrade sounds from K13 to K15 that add even more value...to me. I'm under no illusions that the other 90% will ever be dealt with here. Some favorite Reaktor ensembles will be used long before exploring the plethora of sound collections. If I were 50 years younger, I'd make some time for such travels, but that's for other younger people to enjoy
Mi dos centavos

[clipnotic]

If their products would working really good, I would pay them also the full prices, but they don't! Kontakt 7 still crashes regularly on a modern Win 11 Audio System. I have movie projects with really many synth instances from Spectrasonics, East West ... and they're working without problems! But Kontakt 7 crashes also in an empty project! I don't pay for an update, if the last version still is not working without problems.

And their whole price system "rip off marketing" is a joke. At the moment they want 499 Euro for the big CE 15 update, but you'll only get their stuff till September 2024. On their marketing website is still written you'll get all, but it's not really all!

This company tries everything to trick their customers again and again! Before you buy from them, you have to read endless posts here, on reddit ... to find all their tricks!

Most of their libraries are just multisamples with a nice picture and most of them have no patterns and no harmonic features, some of them still looking like plugins 20 years ago. I don't need patterns and can play my chords without features, but that is what they only give for their ridiculous prices.

So finally, I'll reprogram all sounds in my "Kontakt broken" projects with my alternatives and sell this shit

[glokraw]

"rip off marketing" is a joke

NI have comparison charts showing the content in different versions of Komplete. They have had regular seasonal discount sales for ages, and lately, have been testing out various bundle subset options for those not wanting a full Komplete setup. As the music industry self-destructs, and societies collapse, it's not as easy to sell products that demand work from a customer, when the pool of customers becomes dominated by 'one-finger-wonders' and AI regimens. Mastering music instruments isn't a glitzy process, and kids growing up with musical dreams want lots of glitz, so many companies sell to the lowest common denominators, flooding purchasers with ready-made options to pop out a tune with a few dozen mouseclicks

Customer service, and buggy products are another issue, but I've had good luck when politely communicating with support bots or staff, should such exist. I typically don't buy software so expensive, that I wouldn't be willing to give it away, or sell cheap, should I lose all hope, or find vastly superior replacements. And I have old computers with componants not gaining in support, in most cases. I don't expect time-travel miracles from support staff and bug-stompers whose pointy-haired-bosses point to narrowing lanes of profit, from which to send paychecks. The music tools industry provides me with amazing sounds and equipment, undreampt of for nearly all of human history, so I'm happy as a clam at high tide. etc etc

[clipnotic]

Yes, they have comparison charts, but you have to search for them and there is also not written, that you'll only get the stuff just till one year ago! If you go on their Collector's Edition website, they are telling you with big letters "you will get all!" And sorry, I also have to deliver professional music to my customers and they aren't interested in if that crap Kontakt plugin crashes again and again! If we talk about buisness, everybody in the buisness has to bring his best work! If you would go to the butcher and buy a steak and eat it, but then you have to go to the hospital, because you're sick, would you also protect that butcher, like you do with NI here? This company doesn't fix bugs, every simple update costs money again and again, you're buying libraries and have to buy a new version of their still buggy sample player, because you can't work with them anymore! And if you need support, you have to talk to a horrible bot or to other users in their community, is that professional buisness?

[glokraw]

'Professional' is not narrowly defined, as markets fluctuate, sometimes unpredictably, sometimes wildly. We saw that with covid, with the 2008 eco crash, with chipakers in disasters, with apple moving off Intel. Steinway is running out of wood for pianos, as are some guitar makers, due to dumb regulations...is that bug fixable, or a complex market problem? When motherboard makers introduced more complex capabilities, like AVX, it was not instantly supported, neither were all incarnations of ARM, some things cost a lot of money to implement, and sales must justify such investment. Then there are 'bugs' that are the result of unforseen incompatibilities among myriad combos of computer hardware, audio hardware, OS versions, daw and plugin versions, desktop utility softwares, security issues, and data harvesting. Support teams, if they exist, need a full rundown of the system having troubles, which few people provide. I'm not trying to 'protect' NI (or IK or Spectrasonics or Arturia etc) but point out that what does work (not necessarily the newest release) is inherantly valuable to those who use it, and it is partly on us as users of such products, to tailor our systems as needed. For example, the system I use Kontakt 6 on, won't work with IK's latest Studio MAX, so I have a separate setup with a bunch of Vulcan video nonsense IK requires
A price I am happy to pay. Admittedly, I'm an old fool, can't code, nor make sense of those who do, but I AM flooded with wonderful options at every turn, And if A isn't happy, B, C, D, or E likely will be, and without costing a fortune
Mi dos centavos

[glokraw]

I should add that I did not upgrade to K7, based on reports from people whose opinions I have come to respect. I'm not an 'early adaptor', I wait and see how people smarter and more experienced than I am, rate their experiences. etc In the case of K8, I'll likely wait until some holiday sale of K15 standard, and see how it shakes, rattles, and rolls

[mixyguy2]

As the music industry self-destructs, and societies collapse, it's not as easy to sell products that demand work from a customer, when the pool of customers becomes dominated by 'one-finger-wonders' and AI regimens. Mastering music instruments isn't a glitzy process, and kids growing up with musical dreams want lots of glitz, so many companies sell to the lowest common denominators, flooding purchasers with ready-made options to pop out a tune with a few dozen mouseclicks

Someone else gets it, thank you Although I would delete the word "dozen" above.

Customer service, and buggy products are another issue, but I've had good luck when politely communicating with support

I must say, I've done my share of ripping on NI, but I have had good customer support experiences too. Microsoft this isn't.

[mixyguy2]

I should add that I did not upgrade to K7, based on reports from people whose opinions I have come to respect. I'm not an 'early adaptor', I wait and see how people smarter and more experienced than I am, rate their experiences. etc In the case of K8, I'll likely wait until some holiday sale of K15 standard, and see how it shakes, rattles, and rolls

Take this FWIW (maybe nothing) but I've been using Kontakt 8 Player (free) version and no issues to date. IMO v8 is what v7 should have been. I will may upgrade eventually, but have no need at the moment...

[clipnotic]

It makes also no sense to update next summer 2026 with 50%, because you'll still get only their stuff till September 2024. Some months later in November 2026 you'll get "really" everthing till November 2026 if they release Komplete 16. So if that update costs also 499. It's also funny, that some shops are selling the ugrade from K14 Ultmate to 15 CE much cheaper, than the update from K14 CE to K15 CE. This price crap is just crazy.

[kenny saunders]

I went from 6 to 8 and it was a worthwhile update IMO, 8.1 and 8.2 have added even more value.
With a MK3 keyboard its a pretty powerful combo now.

What are the improvements from K7?

I have Mk3 and Collectors edition 14. Not very enticed to do the CE15 upgrade and not entirely on-board with just buying K8 alone.

[MachineClaw]

Kontakt 7 was not a great product release. there were lots of issues and bugs. Kontakt 8 fixed a lot of the issues. many many many pages on internet about the release and issues with Kontakt 7. I skipped Kontakt 7 but Kontakt 8 has been stable and most of the issues I have read about have been addressed like speed of loading, crashes etc. Kontakt 8 introduced a bunch of new features, new scripting etc. there is a NI Video covering new features on NI website.

Kontakt 7 will probably never receive new updates or patches to address the issues, how it works in the world of software now, new version addresses the previous issues and adds new features. So if you have Kontakt 7 and have issues - well updating to Kontakt 8 should be better for you.

regarding Komplete. every version of Komplete package upon release contains the current product line of products. then NI releases new products over that next year and those products are not in the version of Komplete that you bought. you can either purchase the new products independently with a separate license or wait for the next version of Komplete to be released which will include the previous year of product releases. what gets included depends on the Komplete version you buy, Komplete Ultimate contains the majority and CE containing everything. But buying every year or an upgrade to Komplete you may only be getting 1-3 new products and it may not be worth upgrading - depending on your needs and how much NI releases. many Komplete users skip versions. I myself had Komplete Ultimate 10 and recently upgraded to Komplete Ultimate 15 which included many years of new releases and the upgrade price was justifiable for me due to how much new stuff I was getting (I really wanted the new guitar libraries and some of the Play instruments). again it's what it's worth at the time.

you can buy sperate products and then sell the independent license later on, may be frustrating and time consuming but there is a path, buy Kontakt 8 then later buy upgrade Komplete including Kontakt 8 and sell the independent license.

it's always been this way with NI, for years and years. saying that the upgrade pricing is not fair or not the Komplete product is not everything is disingenuous. NI has sales twice a year at 50% off generally one for the Komplete product line sale and another for various products at 50%.

[concealed identity]

I feel like most if not all of the fixes that Kontakt 8 brought were also ported to 7 afterwards, and a lot of the unresolved issues people had with 7 were still in 8. 7 had a really rocky launch but by the time it got its final patch, I don't think it was all that different from 8 in terms of stability. Maybe some others feel differently, though.

[Ah_Dziz]

I've still not upgraded past 7 (though I have 8 "player " installed with libraries) and I still load V6 (or even 5) whenever I'm going to do anything more than load up and play instruments. That being said,I've had no crashes that are Kontakt related from 8 player or 7 player in my massive composition template. These are generally run inside VEP outside of cubase, but they seem to be working fine.

[clipnotic]

Well, I tried Kontakt 8 player with a simple chord phrase from the "Session Strings Pro 2" library and compared the exact same sequence with the same settings in Kontakt 6 Full and the difference is, in Kontakt 6 Full it runs perfect tight, only after some loop playing it sometimes mutes a part, in Kontakt 8 Player it randomly changes the start of notes a bit and / or misses a chord and runs overall not really tight. And that's what I mean, since years you have to live with bugs and not really accurate results and you have to bounce loops like with hardware synths in the 90s, but they think they can ask for money again and again, for what?

On my system I have also huge projects with really many instances of big VSTs and such problems I have only with NI products!

EDIT 01:
The next one. I used "Mallet Flux" and the new Chord feature in Kontakt 8 Player. I changed some of the Mallet Flux presets and changed one chord. I got a full crash and my DAW closed. I'm also testing with two versions of my DAW, the newest and the previous version with all updates. In both I have exactly the same problems. And the Mallet Flux presets are not really big ...

And it makes ne really angry, because there are so many good sounds and ideas prisoned in that crap sample player

EDIT 02:
And the party goes on. I played around in Kontakt 8 Player with some presets in the "Action Strike Ensemble" Such nice sounds, I could use them in a score project, but I got a full crash and my DAW closed ...

Kontakt is like an very old lady, you have to be very patient and carefully, but nonetheless it get's one heart attack after another ... shame on you!

EDIT 03 - a good message!

I'm working on a Heavy Metal project and bought an E-Guitar library from another developer, it has also phrases an many presets and I'm playing very hard with it in Kontakt player 8 and it runs perfect, no crash, everything is tight. Perhaps there are also bugs in the NI librarys?

[Held]

Is anyone using Kontakt 8 with 8dio libraries? I'm using 7 and the preset browser is unusable because the names get cut off too early and you can't see which part you're loading.

kontakt7_preset_browser_8dio.png

I've seen that Kontakt 8's browser is a single column and the width can be adjusted. I would like to know if it can adjusted wide enough to be useful with 8dio libraries.

I'd appreciate it if someone could let me know.