Is 1.5 worth the money?

Just a few questions for those of you who have 1.5 already...

Did you think that it was a worth while use of $29?

Do polyphonic mute groups work, like can you play correct sounding hi hat lines?

Does the Time Machine 2 play smoothly at tempos/speeds greater than the original speed?

 

havent tried the polymute groups thing but the time machine 2 works well . I found i could reduce the speed of the Grooves by about 60% before i started notice artifacts. I think if u play with the setting maybe your could do better. Speeding up is no problem. The larger fonts thing is handy! Only time will tell if this stuff is useful.The most usefull thing for me would have been a proper Giga import and nothing new in this regard was added in 1.5 as far as i can tell. I think it will be a while till the smoke clears from the registration fallout before any positive feedback can be had..Rich

 

Yes ! Its the $ 29 worth !! (... and also the $ 49 ...)

My experiences:

- The first time that DFD works really as expected
- Time Machine II is a great advantage
- Beat Machine too
- Improved fonts and similar reduce my headaches hours of working with it.

Ohja

P.S.: Important hint. Its highly recommended to remove Kontakt 1.x (and save the presets) before installing 1.5

 

What happend the first time you installed/upgraded, before removing it?

 

60 seconds after downloading 1.5 I installed it straight-forward into my existing Kontakt folder. This was not such a good idea ;-): several strange phenomenas appeared during my first tries, especially with DFD (playing 8 notes, the 9th and all following are muted, this with and without sustain switch, random muting of notes, ...) and Beat-Machine (curious slicing results) and failed preset import from Kompakt. Similar behaviour on my PC and my notebook.

After completely removing Kontakt from my machine(s) (running XP) and reinstalling Kontakt 1.5 from scratch everything works fine After another day of intensive testing especially around DFD, which always tended to make problems in the past (crackles under heavy load etc.) Kontakt 1.5 looks now rock solid for me.

Ohja

 

Is 1.5 worth the c/r protection?

... that's what the thread title should be.

Are you really aware, that from now on you are dependent on NI until the end of your Kontakt days?

Imagine you own a Yamaha synth, end every time you change the mixer or an external fx unit you have to call Yamaha to allow you to use your synth within this new setup. No user would accept that ...

 

Interesting question!! I think from the "EUR 29,-- point of view" the risk is considerable low - especially with the chance to roll-back to 1.x in the case that (oh my god ;-) NI as the exclusive vendor (there is no second souce) would file for chapter 11 or an equivalent ("Insolvenz").

Hmmmm - but I just begin thinking about my Reaktor 4, Absynth 2, Kompakt and Kontakt 1.5 licenses from a different point of view ...

As an off-side question: With regard to software licensing and terms of usage: Is there a mechanism provided, which assures under *any* condition that a NI license can be issued in maybe 4 or 6 years - in the case that a new computer is bought etc. - nevertheless what happened to NI? (The same issue as for a number other small software companies with highly specilized niche products).

I still own - and temporarily use - my bunch of Roland, Yamaha, Ensoniq, EMU, Oberheim etc. and I don't want to imagine what it would like to be to call for example Ensoniq nowadays to get a new 'license' - maybe only because of some changes in my environment )

In summary: Challenge/response is fairly easy and 'hip' today, but I still would choose hardware protection like dongles instead - and since a dongle can carry more than one license it is quite handy (By the way ... a good idea to recycle my Reaktor 3 dongle).

Ohja

 

is 1.5 worth the money?
put it this way: if they'd beta tested it and fixed the myriad of bugs i would have gladly payed 10 times as much for it. As it stands it's a waste of time & money. I'm going back to 1.2 on OS9 - at least i know what all the bugs are
in that version.

 

yes

 

I'm running 1.5 now and it runs perfectly. No glitches, no problems. It sounds to me that most of those having problems either didn't install it properly or they're running it on a Mac.

I feel for you, but I'm not surprised.

robgb

 

I agree. i think the majority of the bugs are hardware and platform related. Everythings working fine so far on SX and XP. Also make sure u figger out how to instal it correctly! This ones not so easy unfortunately. Rich

 

My only complaint so far is registration. I did what they told me to do, got an e-mail response saying they'd send the reg info in minutes and still haven't received anything.

I imagine they're swamped, but you'd think this stuff would be automatic.

rgb

 

yes i am on a mac (osx.3) - why? does NI stuff
tend to work better on a PC? - i only have experience of Kontakt

 

I don't know if NI stuff runs better on PC than on a Mac, but I can tell you it runs GREAT on my PCs, and the only complaints I ever seem to hear are from Mac people.

I don't want to start a flame war, and I'm sure Mac owners love their machines (I love them myself), but the days of Mac superiority in music software are long gone and it seems to me that folks have nothing but trouble with their Macs these days -- although that might be user error, like most computer problems are.

Anyway, I run all my NI stuff on PCs and, based on what I've heard here, would never dream of running it on a Mac. But that's MY particular prejudice and I have no desire to throw darts at those of you who chose a different path....

rgb

 

It's worth it.

Everything here is fine, from the purchase to the download to the registration. I don't exactly care for the registration process either (especially after problems with R4!) but I'll deal. And as for being worried about being dependent on NI, it states in their documentation that at anytime NI ceases to exist or support the product all users would gain the rights to software. Let's face it, this seems to be the future of software, I've recently purchased some shareware programs that are using this method!!!!

I really feel sorry for Windows folks with that Activation crap!!!

Jason

 

And yes...

...I'm on a Mac. I haven't had many problems at all with NI's software.

Jason

 

Good to hear. Maybe it IS all user error.

rgb

 

Re: It's worth it.

Don't feel sorry for us because it really isn't a big deal. Takes about 2 seconds and I've changed hardware numerous times and never had to reactivate.

rgb

 

This statement deserves a flame war

Kidding aside, I've never had any real problem with NI software on a Mac. I'd say there might even be less Mac users who have problems than PC users when upgrading to 1.5, simply because most have different partitions for OS9 and 10 and therefore don't have to worry much about whether to delete the original Kontakt version first, etc.

The thing that I worry is the CP scheme actually. As long as NI stays in business and let me do clean install of my OS when I like - in other words, give me a new keycode whenever I need, then I'm good. If things go wrong with the company, well....

But so far life is good in OS10. Imagine a computer that has yet to crash And now I don't have to restart every time I work with Kontakt.

 

Re: Re: It's worth it.

I dont understand either? What activation crap? Please educate me..Rich