Native Instruments - Kontakt 8

[EvilDragon]

NVMe helps only with initial loading of the instrument (it cannot help at all with parsing the patches, that's fully single core CPU bound) but as far as streaming performance it does not provide any benefits from a regular SATA SSD.

As for the plugin loading, there are multiple reasons - Qt is most probably the biggest culprit.

[clipnotic]

I won't buy any NI stuff again!

Kontakt 7 still has bugs and crashes regularly. And they still ripping off their customers with the update function in Native Access! If you update all the hundreds of instruments with the "update all" button, they automatically update them for future Kontakt versions without any warnings. That means, if you are using Kontakt 7 and install the current updates, you can't use them anymore, because they are only working with Kontakt 8 now! There's also no option to reinstall the old versions, so you have to buy Kontakt 8 or your productions are ruined! Support is only a horrible bot and the community forum, there's no direct mailadress. This is by far the most unprofessional company on the market!

I'm working with almost all well known VSTs since years. I have big projects with many VST synth instances from Spectrasonics, East West plugins and so on. Kontakt 7 crashes regularly if I use just one instance in an empty project.

[mabian]

I won't buy any NI stuff again!

Kontakt 7 still has bugs and crashes regularly. And they still ripping off their customers with the update function in Native Access! If you update all the hundreds of instruments with the "update all" button, they automatically update them for future Kontakt versions without any warnings. That means, if you are using Kontakt 7 and install the current updates, you can't use them anymore, because they are only working with Kontakt 8 now! There's also no option to reinstall the old versions, so you have to buy Kontakt 8 or your productions are ruined! Support is only a horrible bot and the community forum, there's no direct mailadress. This is by far the most unprofessional company on the market!

I'm working with almost all well known VSTs since years. I have big projects with many VST synth instances from Spectrasonics, East West plugins and so on. Kontakt 7 crashes regularly if I use just one instance in an empty project.

Agreed, NI handled the update of their libraries to make them requiring K7 or K8 in one of the worst way I could think of. They should have packaged them as totally different versions, like they did with Analog Dreams v1 vs v2. They could just make a newer edition with all libraries they wanted to update with stricter requirements. And that was it.

Kontakt 6 for me is still the best regarding speed, workflow and convenience - and, it's supported on Native Access 1 which is the only NI plugin manager reasonably running on Wine.
I'm keeping old versions of libraries installed to make sure they still work with it in case I open old projects; as you correctly pointed out, the "update all" button can no longer be used.

For what is worth, NI has stopped getting money from me too.

- Mario

[clipnotic]

I forgot, there's a message from them in the community to "reinstall" old versions from Konakt libraries!

But of course, you need to login to get this "professional" informations!

https://community.native-instruments.co ... 7-6#latest

But this solution is as horrible, as their products! That reminds me on system operations 20 years ago. Since years they're telling us to use Native Access, because it is the software king and you only need one button for everything and so on, but now we have to reinstall this whole shit step by step? I want a single button to fix this crap in Native Access!

[mi-os]

If you update all the hundreds of instruments with the "update all" button, they automatically update them for future Kontakt versions without any warnings. That means, if you are using Kontakt 7 and install the current updates, you can't use them anymore, because they are only working with Kontakt 8 now!

I think that's a misleading statement.

While it is true, that you get newer versions of libraries which can't be opened in a lower versions of Kontakt Full anymore, there is always the free Kontakt Player. This way you can continue using your libraries without having to buy anything.

Edit
If you don't want to install the latest Kontakt Player for some reason, never click 'update all' but update each product manually and read the change log before doing so. The change log will state if the minimum Kontakt version was changed in an update. It's not convenient but works.

[mabian]

If you update all the hundreds of instruments with the "update all" button, they automatically update them for future Kontakt versions without any warnings. That means, if you are using Kontakt 7 and install the current updates, you can't use them anymore, because they are only working with Kontakt 8 now!

I think that's a misleading statement.

While it is true, that you get newer versions of libraries which can't be opened in a lower versions of Kontakt Full anymore, there is always the free Kontakt Player. This way you can continue using your libraries without having to buy anything.

Edit
If you don't want to install the latest Kontakt Player for some reason, never click 'update all' but update each product manually and read the change log before doing so. The change log will state if the minimum Kontakt version was changed in an update. It's not convenient but works.

Sorry but, no. If you have an old project with K5 or k6 that use "updated" library they will fail to load. And, kontakt different versions are different products so your k6 instance won't be magically replaced by a k8 player that can handle the libraries in their new versions. This is utterly crap (if you ask me)

[mi-os]

I can't speak for other people systems but that is what VST auto-migration is for. It should automatically replace older instances with newer ones. That feature might not be available in some DAWs.

Edit
You'll find links to older versions at NI forum. You could also reinstall from your Komplete HD or just copy from a backup file (you surely did backups, right? )

Edit 2
I also think that the way they handle it is not exactly optimal. They could have just added a global filter that only offers updates up to a specific Kontakt version. That way we could still just click 'update all'.

[El°HYM]

You should only use Reaktor anyway, and in that way the pressure would just crush any locust capitalists mind.

[Alexander_D]

Kontakt 8 is also crashed so often...

[SLiC]

Kontakt 8 is also crashed so often...

Must be set-up dependent, I havent had a crash yet with 8 (WIn 11)

[EvilDragon]

Sorry but, no. If you have an old project with K5 or k6 that use "updated" library they will fail to load.

Only if you use a DAW which doesn't support plugin migration, to be more exact.

https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... W-Projects

[mabian]

Sorry but, no. If you have an old project with K5 or k6 that use "updated" library they will fail to load.

Only if you use a DAW which doesn't support plugin migration, to be more exact.

https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... W-Projects

That would be nice, because I use REAPER. So you are saying that if I don't have K6 installed, but I have K8 (even player), libraries and settings in a project are migrated?
Anyway, this doesn't seem to work for K5 and earlier, only K6 and later are supported, right?

EDIT: it seems to work up (down) to Kontakt 2 for REAPER. Nice!
EDIT 2: BUT.... it cannot work if I had some non official library in K5 and have K8 installed, which goes into demo with non official libraries... right?

Thanks,
Mario

[EvilDragon]

Correct, that's the point of migration. You can only keep the latest version of Kontakt on your system.

Since Reaper is one of the rare DAWs which can still load 32-bit plugins, I liaised between Cockos and NI to help move the migration limit as far back in time as possible. Kontakt 1 was not possible because it has the same binary name as Kontakt 6, heh.

[mabian]

Please see my EDIT 2 above... I happen to have up to K7 full but K8 only player... in this case will K7 be chosen because it's full?

- Mario

[EvilDragon]

Only versions of Kontakt which are not found on the system will be migrated from.

Migration also works in K7, you don't need K8 necessarily. So if you had some old K2-K6 instances, they will move to K7.

Until you upgrade to K8 full and then you can remove K7 etc.