Collection of Feature Requests: Kontakt 6

Hi, here are some feature requests for Kontakt 6.x

For a DAW user since +20 years it seems quite strange there are so few shortcuts in K9ontakt and they are not customizeable. Surprisingly there is a lot of mouse movement necessary to get things done in Kontakt. So here are a few suggestions for less mouse kilometers and less clicks:

1. Keyboard shortcuts for all essential functions - not only very few F1, F2 shortcuts, but for all major functions which are often needed for seamless workflow.
   1. close instrument
   2. minimize / maximize instrument headers
   3. open / close edit section for instrument
      
   4. open / close parameter section which opens up when clicking the instrument icon
   5. quickload section
   6. rescaling Kontakt
   7. load instrument from browser
2. Customizeable Keyboard shortcuts: Have an option menu which lets us customize all those keyboard shortcuts

Here are some other feature requests, which could be useful.

1. Piano Keys window: Almost all VSTi allow holding Leftclick + drag to play multiple keys while dragging around on the keyboard. How come Kontakt only plays one key at a time using this method?
2. GUI scaling as mentioned many times (100%, 110%, 90%, etc.) like the VSTi by U-HE for example.
3. Import of SF2, SFZ, Giga, EXS etc. - I own a lot of Samplebanks from other Samplers. I understand this was possible up to Kontakt 5. Why not anymore?
4. Faster vertical scrolling via mouse wheel in instrument section and browser. Right now the translation wheel<>scrolling does not seem sufficient. Way too much 'wheeling' for little scrolling. (Note: this was answered by EvilDragon: wheel+ctrl scrolls faster... thx!)
5. Favorites handling in Browser / Files should be like in most software: select a folder, press a 'Star' button (or right click) to add the folder to a 'favorites' list, which can be edited later on. (like in Sampletank or in Chrome Bookmarks)
6. Live recording and sampling directly in Kontakt.
7. Status load bar when importing NKI instruments. Big instrument need quite a while to load and I am never sure if they are loading or not.
8. Save custom snapshot with "enter": If i save a custom snapshot, type in a name then i want to press Enter to save the snapshot. This does not work - i thought this would be standard since 1983.. . So it would be nice to save name of the snapshot via pressing Enter.
9. Double click on a fader/poti resets value to default value (now it workds via ctrl-click but this needs 2 hands instead of 1 hand)
10. Use Up / Down keys to select and activate next instrument
11. I copy an idea from another user here: Quickload window on the left side so it won't cover the keys window

Thank you for considering.

Regards / Grüße vom Südstern
Peter

 

Keyboard shortcuts in a DAW is a very tricky topic because different DAWs behave differently when plugins want to do something with keyboard input...

As for 3rd party sample format import, I can only assume since that part of Kontakt was not in fact handled by NI, but by third party (Chicken Systems), I could see a number of scenarios where this could flake out for some reason or another. You can still use K5 if you really really need it.

 

as for VSTi keyboard shortcuts in a DAW. I am sure there is a way of using the active Kontakt window as a reference.

More FRs:

4. Faster vertical scrolling via mouse wheel in instrument section and browser. Right now the translation wheel<>scrolling does not seem sufficient. Way too much 'wheeling' for little scrolling.

5. Favorites handling in Browser / Files should be like in most software: select a folder, press a 'Star' button (or right click) to add the folder to a 'favorites' list, which can be edited later on. (like in Sampletank or in Chrome Bookmarks)

6. Live recording and sampling directly in Kontakt.

7. Status load bar when importing NKI instruments. Big instrument need quite a while to load and I am never sure if they are loading or not.

[included in the first post.]

 

7. already exists, shows as a small bar while samples are loaded below instrument header.

 

I can't help shake off the feeling that you're trying to use Kontakt as something it's not.

#4 I don't quite understand this one. Things work decently fast but not excessive (also because you'll need the option to scroll through presets). But if you need faster, just drag the indicator around?

#6 Definitely not in favor of this one. In my opinion nothing good comes from software which tries to be a bit of everything. "Sampling" sounds easy enough but it would add a lot of extra overhead into the software. Instead I'd rather use software which has been fully optimized for sampling and use Kontakt as a sampler that has been fully optimized for processing and playing those samples. Many software out there follows this philosophy by the way, and in my opinion for very good reasons.

I'm kind of indifferent about the rest.

 

indifferent about keyboard shortcuts? if you don't use it you wouldn't have to if they exist.

 

Also if your mousewheel is too slow, hold Ctrl/Cmd while mousewheeling to jump in faster increments.

 

8. If i save a custom snapshot, type in a name. Then i want to press Enter to save the snapshot. This does not work - i thought this would be standard since 1983.. . So it would be nice to save the snapshot via pressing Enter.

[included in the first post.]

 

9. Double click on a fader/poti resets value to default value (now it works via ctrl+click but this needs 2 hands instead of 1 hand)