transfer kontakt 3 + 4 vst plugins to kontakt 5 plugin

hello,

in the middle of an album production, my old windows 7 pc died and i had to buy a new pc with windows 10. therefore i had to upgrade cubase 6 to cubase 8, and realized that all my old songs with kontakt 3 and 4 vst version are not supported anymore because of windows 10. i upgraded to kontakt 5, but still could not solve the problem, because i dont know how to replace my kontakt 3,4 vst plugins with kontakt 5 without loosing all the corresponding kontakt tracks and its settings.

does anybody know how i can solve this huge problem without recreating everything from the start?

 

I think you might need to hack the Cubase project files and change every instance of "Kontakt 3" or "Kontakt 4" to "Kontakt 5". You will need a hex editor, most likely.

 

Hello RichardLederer and welcome to the forum.

Aarghh! I'm sorry to hear about your quandary. First of all, I would raise an NI Support Ticket (or phone them) to see what Support can suggest.

Are you absolutely sure that Kontakt 3 and 4 cannot be installed on Windows 10? Using some sort of Compatibility mode? (Hmm, this says no: https://www.native-instruments.com/...how/4254/windows-product-compatibility-chart/ )

If not, then this might be an approach:

• get hold of a Windows 7 PC, install your Kontakt 3 and 4 there,
• load the projects and save a Multi from each Kontakt instance,
• on your Windows 10 PC, load each project,
• remove each Kontakt 3 or 4 instance,
• add a Kontakt 5 instance and load the relevant Multi.

There might also be some sort of brute-force way to get the Kontakt plug-ins off your old disk (or an archive) and onto the new PC. :

 

thanks for all the advices so far.
unfortunately i have no idea how to use any hex editor and i guess it would be to complicated for me
when i start the old cubase songs on my window 10 pc, i see the slot with the kontakt 4 vst and the "!!!" signt wich marks that this plugin can not be used.
i already started a NI support ticket three days ago, but did not get any answer so far (actually i did not know which support matches my need so i kontakted the pre-sell support, even if i already baught kontakt 5).
i also have no windows 7 computer around where i can install the old software.

i am a bit surprised that no one else seems to have this problem. switching from an older to a new version with incompatible plugins is not such an unusual thing i thought ....

 

Others with a failed Windows 7 system would have the same problem but have just not read this thread or not replied.

Try phoning NI - numbers are on this page:
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/company/contact-ni/

 

It's not that hard - it's just like a regular text editor only it shows things slightly different. Download the free HxD hex editor, open your Cubase project file in it. You will see on the left side hex values and on the right side actual readable text. You can search this using the Find tool (Ctrl+F). Search for Kontakt 3 or Kontakt 4, see what happens. Change 3/4 to 5 in every place it is found. Save. Try opening in Cubase.

 

Caution before you try EvilDragon's suggestion: work on a COPY of your project file, not the original! Just in case it doesn't work!

Please do report back. It'd be interesting to see if it works!

This is a somewhat recurrent problem for Kontakt users. The issue is that the currently-used VST spec doesn't allow for plug-ins to "inherit" each other's data. By contrast, the AudioUnit spec does, so if you try exactly this situation on an AU host that supports inheritance, Kontakt 5 would correctly open instances of Kontakt 1, 2, 3, and 4. (But this doesn't help you at all; just giving you the history here.)

 

HxD will make a backup copy of the file that's being edited after you save it.


Also inheriting plugin data (state chunk) is up to the developer to handle, at least from compatibility standpoint - for example since Kontakt is backwards compatible, your Kontakt instances in your DAW project WILL contain the same data, the only thing that needs to change is which PLUGIN gets called to load that state chunk (and this is the problem with hosts that don't have human readable project file formats like Reaper does, for example ). The only difference between VST and AU is that in AU this plugin loading is done automatically if older versions cannot be found, while with VST you gotta do it manually (if you can tweak the DAW project file, that is).

 

sorry i was supid, before
after restarting my pc the kontakt 4 plugin was recognized by cubase.
but that just lead me to another problem: when i open the kontakt vst plugin, i see an empty kontakt without all the instruments which i added to if for the song, that normally load automatically when i start a cubase project. so i dont hear anything when i start the cubase song.

 

Confused here. So you have successfully installed Kontakt 4 on Windows 10? Does the K4 standalone run OK / load and play instruments?

 

@EvilDragon: wow, i was able to use the HxD editor successfully, thanks for the advice
anyway, i now have the same problem as mentioned (the kontakt vst instance, but associated not the Instruments inside it), but anway better to be able to use the new kontakt version than the old one.

@DarkStar: as you can read in my post before, the problem changed. i can load the old vst plugin, but ist empty and does not contain the Instruments which i saved with the cubase song.

 

Well that is a bit problematic... Sadly I don't have any ideas there...


(BTW I think any previous Kontakt version can actually be installed on W10 without issues, might just need to run the installer in Win XP compatibility mode...)

 

I'm out of any more ideas too.

 

i still could not solve my problem, and am unable to continue with my old cubase songs, and neither got any answer from the native Instruments support nor from the steinberg suport since 6 days.

the current status is, that i can open my kontakt 4 vst plugins of my old cubase songs on my new pc, but they are all empty (the multi Instrument that i saved for each song on the old computer for each song is totally gone). i also realised that the outputs of the kontakt 4 plugin are not the same as i set up on my old Computer (they dont match the cubase tracks repesending the kontakt Instruments). i also realised that changing my kontakt 4 plugin to kontakt 5 (by using the HxD Editor as @EvilDragon described) changed the name in the VST slot to kontakt 5, but does not replace the Instrument (when i open it ist still the same).

the only thing connected to kontakt that did not get lost, are the cubase tracks that represent the kontakt Instruments, but i can not hear anything because kontakt does not produce any sounds, due to the missing Instruments.

does anybody maybe have an idea how to fix that?

 

You mistake was that you should have copied Kontakt 4's quickload to your new computer. I believe now that you have to start from scratch and redo all of your multis.

 

I always save a Kontakt Multi along with my Cubase projects. Since K5 will load the K3 multi, you can recreate your setup in Cubase by reloading everything in Kontakt from the old multi. This won't help the orginal poster, but it makes things a little more robust. If you save the multi w/o any of the samples it doesn't take up much space.

 

were you using 32bit kontakt 4 in cubase 6?

 

actually i was able to save the multi instruments from my old computer and load it to the new one. but i also have to save each single kontakt-cubase track setting and load it to the new track. quite a lot of work to do, but i could not find any alternative way.

the old compute was windows 32bit, while the new one is 64bit

 

someone in the cubase forum told me that he had the same problem as i had. he told that the reason for that is, that as soon as kontakt 5 gets installed, the libraries are converted to kontakt 5 libraries, and therefore can not be read in kontakt 4. he said that it works if the cubase songs are loaded when only kontakt 4 is installed, but not anymore if kontakt 5 is installed?

can anyone confirm this? if its true, would it help me to uninstall kontakt 5 and leave kontakt 3 + 4 and open the cubase song again, in the hope that my old instruments are restored?

 

i just realised now, that i am unable to load any kontakt instrument from a kontakt 4 instance, so it seems to be clear that the reason for my problem is, that i installed kontakt 5. so i guess i have to uninstall kontakt 5, copy again the library from the old computer to the new one and start the cubase song again.