Just installed my new Kontakt 3 and this is my opinion

Hi everyone!
I've been a user of ni kontakt and reaktor for some years, and although as almost everyone else I've been upset by some ni options concerning their products, I've never before posted a post complaining (maybe i should have). But now that I recently updated kontakt I really have to try and explain to everyone else who hasn´t what are they going to get. I'll focus on using kontakt 3 rtas, cus that is how i use it most of the times.
So first impressions:
- library is very good, a step beyond regarding kontakt 2, especially in the vintage folder
- new drum articulation script is really useful
- new effects are good but seem to taken from guitar rig, and in my opinion most people who use kontakt aren't looking for this kind of effects (guitar cabinets, screamers, etc...), although they're useful, maybe upgrading the convolution presets with new ways of mangling sounds, new arpeggiators and performance scripts, good delays and spectral fx; there are numerous kinds of effects and sound manglers that could explored instead of trying to transform kontakt into a multi-fx plug-in just because you have the technology from other products.
- the panels are a little more user friendly, easier to operate etc., but I never had problems with the other interface
- overall this could be a nice update to kontakt, although really new features were not expected.

Using kontakt first time everything worked very well, instaling is the same without problems, and in standalone mode everything went very well.
So let's use it in protools (M-Powered 7.3.1cs5)
- the time loading the plug-in hasn't change (that's not a big problem for me although is a long time)
- everytime you touch any control in protools or another plug-in the sound from kontakt stops, sttuters, etc..
- everytime you stop the sequence the cpu load goes to overload and you get those nice sounds
- some options you have to change them a couple of times so they become effective (like changing cabinets etc...)
- after while if you do a combination of commands faster or if you do something right after stopping the sequence protools crashes
- the new and nice instrument especific controls stop the sound most of the times you change them.

This problems occur mainly when you recorded a sequence and push play.
In case you wondering if it's not my computer that is ruining the performance, during this experience I never passed +/- 5% cpu load in kontakt (didn't measure it in protools). So going from 5% to overload is a bit extreme just because I pushed stop.
I even put the latency at 512 samples (never needed before).

So this was my first experience with the "rhodes" preset of kontakt, and although I still think the update is nice, releasing products in this state of development and testing, is a recurring strategy by ni that should be re-considered in case ni doesn´t wan't to lose anymore clients.

 

+1

Well put jbgb - so glad to hear I'm not the only one who has felt this way for years.

Did you happen to notice if you have any presets available for K3's internal fx inserts? Seems to be a problem for many users.

 

Here's the same:

K3 standalone... no problems
K3 as RTAS plug in ProTools LE 7.3 (on osx10.4, 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) only problems: already when I try to play more than 1 note at a time, K3 begins to crack and stutter...

Settings are all fine (as I said, in standalone mode evreythings OK, and K2 went perfectly well as RTAS-plug with the same settings)

From NI still no reply on my mail. What could be a really inspiring VI is at the moment VERY disappointing.

 

Hi!
I have just downloaded and installed 3.0.1 and for what I understand most of the problems I mentioned above are solved. I've been playing within protools and experienced no cracks or stuttering.
I noticed that multiprocessor support is automatically disabled when you load the plug-in.
As I said before most of the problems I've experienced were in playback, and I've been playing and bouncing to other tracks and everything seems to be pretty stable.
I couldn't open sessions with kontakt3 and that also seems to work fine.
I haven't downloaded the library update but so far so good.
For what I've noticed this is now a product ready to be released.
My congratulations to the NI team, better late than never.

 

drag midi to host still crashes protools for me and creates crash logs

 

Yes, that is true, just tried it (cus' I don't normally use midi sequencing from kontakt) and it just gives an error message.
Also, I already got a crash didn't really understood why, just playing with the modulation from keyboard.

 

I carried out Drag & Drop MIDI of Slices Séquences on the Desk and
that functions.
I will test on DIGITAL Performer and keep you informed _

 

I have to test with Kontakt 3 Plug-ins withh Digital Performer and the Drag & Drop MIDI to Host function correctly and fine _

 

Thanks for your initial experiences. I will stick with Kontakt 2 for now until i start seeing some favourable posts appearing, to be sure i am not upgrading to a lemon with go faster stripes.

'Beta-Testers, please form a line at the sales counter!'

 

Well, I had an A-OK post...which I had to delete after K3 crashed a minute or two later. I did the update, opened K3 in Cubase SX (2.2), loaded a wave file, opened the wave editor, crash.

I'm on an old version of Cubase, so we'll see after the upgrade to Cubase 4 gets here. But for now, this update hasn't fixed any of the problems I was having before. They've all been reported already, so I won't repeat them here.

 

I'm also having some issues.

K3 was crashing Sonar 2.2 XL(pressing any 'solo' button would cause a crash), so on the advice of the NI support staff, I tried K3 with the trial version of Sonar 6.1 producer.

If I use K3 as the only plugin I have no problems...with the exception of the metronome bug which has been well documented.

K3 does not like DFHSuperior at all. Crashes every time with the error clearly pointing to the kontakt dll.
Any timeworks plugins also crashes Sonar if K3 is loaded.

The worst part is that I 'crossgraded' to Kontakt 3 from the 'Kompakt' player that came with EWQL Silver Pro XP which works perfectly with all my plugins. I can't get it to crash with any of the above methods and had absolutely no problems before installing K3.

AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
4 Gigs Ram
Win XP
Card Deluxe with WDM/ASIO drivers

Poly

 

Update: Installed the update.
So far it seemed to solve all problems.

 

I've been using K3 since it arrived, what, a month ago? Longer? Short version: no problems here directly connected with K3. Long version:

I've used k3 as stand-alone and within DP 5.12 and Sib 5.0 and 5.1. Also, I've used two instances of k3 inside a plogue bidule. No problems whatsoever due to k3.

Regarding cracks and pops, I was very puzzled when I began to have them. I finally realized that NI had added convolution reverbs to all the VSL sounds I was using, perhaps a dozen or more separate ones running simultaneously. This was totally unnecessary, so I deleted them all and set the reverb up properly, ie on an aux track, and used the aux sends from each instr. The clicks and pops disappeared. In order to get better performance, as I wanted as much headroom as I could get, I "downgraded" from convolution to regular reverb.

All in all, I'm very pleased with k3 and look forward to digging deeper into it. I have the k2 tutorial and, in going throught it, I am simply astonished at how much there is in this program.