Read this.

Read this.

 

Wow, this is frankly terrible news. Xyenz Fyxion, trusampler, Lab Rat; what do you think of this? This is the exact opposite direction that NI should be going in. They need to be more open and less closed, otherwise they're pushing a lot of people towards the competition. Lock-in is terrible. NI needs to stop behaving like Apple.

The tl;dr:

But how does it affect you? You may not notice this limitation, nor care about it. You create a Kontakt 6 Instrument, save it, and load it back in Kontakt 6 with no problems. You buy a Kontakt library that says it only runs in Kontakt 6 and up, and it does. No problem. So, what's the problem?

This! You wake up one day and want to use WHAT YOU CREATED on the keyboard you gig with. Say you've spent a lot of time and you've created 10,000 instruments in Kontakt 6, even using Creator Tools. So you try to use Translator to convert YOUR CREATION into your keyboards format, and you find out you can't. Or, one day down the road a sampler comes out that really really interests you. Guess what, you can't use ANY of that former work, you have to start from scratch.

Or - let's take something different. You wish Kontakt 6 operated in a different way, you want to edit things a bit differently, or you need to make some automated adjustments that Creator Tools doesn't do, and you really hate Lua. You're stuck - you can only plead your case to ONE entity - NI - and they aren't likely to listen to you, unless you have a thousand people signed to your cause (not likely).

Steinberg did this back in HALion 3, but then (and now) there are very few HALion users. Kontakt is BY FAR the most dominant sample-playback engine out there, so it's very important for you to know that anything written in Kontakt 6 cannot be used with anything else.​

 

More fuel for the fire this is a step backwards.

 

It doesn't thrill me either. I wonder if Batch Re-Save or saving Multis does something bad to older libraries? Sadly, all of this is probably due to thieves cracking the libraries and putting it up on Torrent web sites. But, as usual, it won't stop them but makes things suck for the honest users.

 

Native Instruments is becoming Avid or Apple completely disregarding the end users. Ill call it now they're going to lose marketshare over these terrible decisions.

 

Perhaps the Maschine MK3 and KKMK2 aren't selling all that well if they're heading towards a more closed eco-system with Kontakt? Better solution would be to fix the outstanding problems that users have and then they'll happily buy into the eco-system.

 

They're doing what people do: When they feel powerful enough, they start pushing other people around.

I think I'm getting off of this train at 5.8.1. If I can't make decent music with what I have, I shouldn't be making music. My only fear is that someday I won't be able to reinstall and enable the libraries I have when my computer has to be replaced or a drive fails. I'm trying to get to the bottom of how all of that works; it's hard to get answers.

 

Hi everyone,

We’re very surprised to see this post coming from Chicken Systems. Other than the long lasting relationship we’ve had with them since 2002, we have been in closer communication over the last month, exchanging details about Kontakt 6. We have reached out again today, in an attempt to understand their concerns in a constructive manner.

We’ll keep you posted.

Thanks,
Dinos

 

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!
c.

 

But, is it true?

 

There is so much information in there. We could start breaking it down and commenting on whether the separate bits are true or not in this forum thread. But that would be neither productive nor fair, neither for Chicken Systems nor Native Instruments. This is why we've reached out to them privately to allow for the right kind of exchange to happen before we share further updates. I hope you understand.

 

OK. Can you confirm just the technical aspects of it? And, can you also tell me whether performing a Batch Re-save or saving a Multi involving older libraries will change them?

 

Batch-resaving or any sort of saving operation will always save the NKI/NKM/NKB with the Kontakt version timestamp of the version you did it in. This is how it has always been, nothing has been changed there. It certainly doesn't change anything in the patch itself - that would be illogical.

To directly answer: no, it does not. It just saves the patch with a different version number (in case of pre-K4.2 patches, they are also saved in the then-new binary format, which was not created to lock you in, but to drastically improve loading times).

 

Does that new Kontakt version number saved in the NKI/NKM/NKB files prevent you from loading an old pre 4.2 library into a pre 4.2 version of Kontakt after you've Batch Re-saved it in a post 4.1 version of Kontakt?

 

Using a certain Kontakt version (e.g., v5.6.0) to load a patch created (or saved, or re-saved or batch re-saved) in a more recent version (e.g., v5.8.0) has never been possible; there are minor exceptions but they are limited to version bumps that were only about bug fixes (e.g., 5.8.0 can handle 5.8.1 files).

But please be patient; we will not post anything further before we get the chance to talk to Chicken Systems.

 

+1 with DInos. We'll have that conversation on Monday so please be patient

 

Hello again,

Having had the chance to talk to Garth from Chicken Systems earlier today, here’s an update on the topic. To the point: with Kontakt 6, we have changed nothing about the way Kontakt reads and writes files. It is just that maintaining the technical solution that we had in place to allow Chicken Systems to read and write Kontakt files takes up time. And we chose to invest this time into developing new Kontakt & Creator Tools features instead. We never actively spent time to prevent anyone from taking their work from our platform to another. It was the other way around: we didn’t spend the extra time to enable them to do so conveniently (one could still use Creator Tools to extract some data from their Kontakt creations; we are not locking anyone in).

That being said, we do see why Chicken Systems wanted to inform their user base that things are different for them with Kontakt 6. We just feel that the tone and a lot of the content of their post was painting an inaccurate picture of our intentions and by focusing on certain aspects of the latest developments there was plenty of room for misinterpretation on the technical aspects as well.

One last thing: we are listening, and as we’re moving forward with Kontakt & Creator Tools, we are doing our best to make sure to focus on the things that matter the most to all of you using our products on a daily basis!

Thanks,
Dinos

 

Thanks Dinos - we are glad that NI is "open on being open" with the data that users compose for themselves and others. Sampler data interchangeability is a good thing for everyone; it is a concern for us when we see a major source of data, for the time being and for whatever reason, not interchangeable.

I apologize for reading into their intent a bit more than I should of; some of it was for (minimal) dramatic effect (re: "locking in") so people would pay better attention to the post.

 

When will we see this? will it be a Kontakt 6 or Translator update?

 

Since Kontakt 6 just came out, let's see over the next couple weeks what pans out. Hopefully that includes the Pan parameter (pardon the pan; I mean, pun). =)