Native Instruments - Kontakt 8

[EvilDragon]

Major version updates were 99 for as long as I can remember... Nothing increased there.

[swilow11]

How could this possibly matter?

It doesn't matter, but it's the fact that this bug has been on the front page (sitting right at the top) of their flagship product since the release of the previous major version (or rather one of the 7.x.x. updates).

It's the fact...what? Each to their own, and you did indicate that it's nitpicking, but I feel you're taking some implict meaning from something that- tbph- I can't even see...

I think the point of this is attention to detail!

It's easy to assume if they missed the corners on the search bar, they missed other things as well. And we know they have!

There's probably come cognitive fallacy here. How does missing a tiny, utterly minor, insignificant at best, invisible at worst, graphic issue imply that they could be missing anything significant?

Their software works well. There are idiosyncrasies to be sure, and some of the peripherals like Native Access sometimes seem problematic for some users, but most of their stuff is just stable as you could want. And even sounds good.

Of course, there are real issues with some NI products. With a product line in the hundreds, it'd be strange if there wasn't.

[funky lime]

Due to technical debt, fixing the shape of the search box is not financially viable due to the thousands of man-hours needed.

[Aloysius]

The sooner you start, the sooner you'll be finished.
We have an old saying: Tell me how hard it was, not how hard it is.

[Choikdoi]

The sooner you start, the sooner you'll be finished.
We have an old saying: Tell me how hard it was, not how hard it is.

NI support has an old saying: If there's something wrong, reinstall your operating system.

[JamminFool]

Tell me how hard it was, not how hard it is.

[SLiC]

A detail I see emerging from NI is much higher $$$ for updating. No thanks

It's always been expensive (£89 in the UK) to update just Kontakt.
I usually wait until something comes out that only runs in the new version.
Of course, there's always the half price sale next year

I doubt you will have to wait that long for a half price sale...

[jbraner]

A detail I see emerging from NI is much higher $$$ for updating. No thanks

It's always been expensive (£89 in the UK) to update just Kontakt.
I usually wait until something comes out that only runs in the new version.
Of course, there's always the half price sale next year

I doubt you will have to wait that long for a half price sale...

Well, here's hoping you're right
I bet it won't be on sale for Black Friday (or Black November/December) though...

[SLiC]

A detail I see emerging from NI is much higher $$$ for updating. No thanks

It's always been expensive (£89 in the UK) to update just Kontakt.
I usually wait until something comes out that only runs in the new version.
Of course, there's always the half price sale next year

I doubt you will have to wait that long for a half price sale...

Well, here's hoping you're right
I bet it won't be on sale for Black Friday (or Black November/December) though...

I guess it depends on if they need revenue this year, I don't think many will bother with Komplete, it's a very weak update (for me at least) other than Kontakt, if it doesn't do well they may have a hole in their revenue as the forecast will be that it does have a % uptake!

Many people saying the new Kontakt looks pretty good (I am happy to wait for it actulay to be released and tested as there have been some bum releases lately from NI) so it will be easy to wait for sale which often lines up to the bugs being fixed in a new version....X.1 often the time to go in

[wayford]

Wasn't sure whether to post it, but decided why not.

There's probably come cognitive fallacy here. How does missing a tiny, utterly minor, insignificant at best, invisible at worst, graphic issue imply that they could be missing anything significant?

This tiny and minor issue doesn't take a lot of time to correct and is easy to notice for anyone who does UI design. So, the question is how for several versions and then after a whole new x.0 update did no one notice this?

NI and all major corporations obviously have developers, designers, QA, etc. A visual change of the corner radii of the search bar (and by extent some other elements) would usually be the product of a suggestion of someone on the design team (a designer deliberately choosing different corner radii for one side of the element if it's not part of the agreed upon design choice is not a possibility).

Then this had to be assigned to the dev team and made it into code. Afterwards, the task was probably checked off as "done" and someone compiled the first version with this change.

Then this change has continued to be present to this day.

There are several possible things it can indicate:

1) No one noticed this - which leads to me say that perhaps in the first place the contrast ratio of the search box background fill and the library background is low. This indicates a further issue with accessibility.

The ratio in this case is 1.17:1, which is not really optimal. Increasing the contrast just a bit would make the search bar to better stand out against the background (I apologise if this is incorrectly phrased, English is not my native language). This is just one thing, but IMO as a designer I'd have a second look at contrast ratios in other parts of the product.

2) Alright, contrast ratio - whatever. Let's say the designers checked it and noticed it afterwards. Did it get reported to the dev team to be corrected? If it was reported, it is somewhere low on the priority list (which would make sense). But then are the resources allocated to developing new products or is it generally just hard to deal with technological debt? If it's the latter, perhaps this is something that needs to be addressed before any UI updates. Otherwise (if I recall correctly), it's an engine which is built on top of Reaktor's audio engine and since evolved. The optimisation of the audio engine definitely should take priority.

My criticism is not from a user perspective, but rather - there are designers who do this as their job. I generally enjoy NI's designs. Still, contrast ratios are important, so are the corner radii. All aspects of the experience influence user's satisfaction with the product. The inconsistencies add up - this element is rounded (categories), but this isn't (snapshot selection), the contrast ratio is low, that element doesn't fit in with the new design system, etc.

Does it make the product bad? Absolutely not. But these little details still matter. This is a flagship product after all.

Alright, back to work now. Enough of my posting

[BJ]

I know this is such a nitpick, but this has been this way since Kontakt 7 (at least in player version) and throughout various versions, the team of designers, devs, and then QA didn't notice that the search box has different corner radii on two sides?



It's the same even in promo images

Maybe they did it on purpose as a design choice

[Starbright]

I find some of the new capabilities like creating realy cool wavetable synths with 2 modifiers per state realy interesting and the new leap mode. I also think the random chords function ist pretty usefull as a composer to get stuck out of old habbits... and I like the new sidebrowser so now I can finally save my favourites!
In fact it would be perfect if the selection would cloudsynced, so I can use them on any of my machines.
Like browsing and testing them at home and being able to recal them on another machine in the studio or at a friends studio

[mixyguy2]

NI be like 'best I can do is new features and zero bugfixing'

Dat what dey be like? sho nuff?

[Tiles]

Wasn't sure whether to post it, but decided why not.

There's probably come cognitive fallacy here. How does missing a tiny, utterly minor, insignificant at best, invisible at worst, graphic issue imply that they could be missing anything significant?

This tiny and minor issue doesn't take a lot of time to correct and is easy to notice for anyone who does UI design. So, the question is how for several versions and then after a whole new x.0 update did no one notice this?

Report it

Kontakt has bigger problems though, that is why this might have been remained unfixed. The game engine Unity has for example a voting system for bugs. No votes, no fix ...

I am still unsure if i should upgrade. I have with every new version the problem of backwards compatibility. And i hates it more with every new version.

[BERFAB]

I see a few people here have reported faster library load times. For the standard "Play" and smaller libraries, I see about the same. But some of these libraries are so huge--50 to 75 gigs--they take forever. Lores, Fables, Kithara and Sunburst Acoustic all don't even indicate that they're loading at first. And then, once they do, I go make a cup of tea and hopefully it's loaded when I get back.
Running in the latest Cubase, without problems for any of my other 3rd party plugs. Is there something in the Options page that I need to check off to get the max performance?

Cheers
-B