Upgraded to K.Ultimate 13. Have Dumb Questions

I had Native Access install all libraries onto an external where all my previous Komplete libraries are stored. I notice there's a folder there called 'NBPL', aka, Preview. What's it's purpose... what does it do?

There's also a whole bunch of those expansion libraries. I don't have Maschine or a Komplete Kontrol so are these things totally useless to me?
thanks

 

Pretty sure preview is the short clip you get when you audition presets. If you have KU 13 I'm sure you can try out the expansion libraries if nothing else than to see if you like them.

 

Thanks. Still not quite clear though. What devices or synths make use this preview thing. Is it some kind of helper app or something?
How can I try out those expansion libraries? Can they be used in anything other than in Maschine or Komplete Controllers?

Aside for that, I almost never open any synths in standalone. But I just opened Absynth and it crashes upon quitting. Seems others have that issue too. Did the support wizard and trashed stuff but didn't work... onto tech support then, heh.
Notived a new thing, 'Creator Tools', whatever the heck that is, lol

 

I'm pretty new to NI and launched straight into the flagship K13U CE, so quite the learning curve and a crash course at that.

I would strongly recommend you look under the Product tab above and click on your KU 13 product there. If you browse through that theres a wealth of info telling you what products are in your package including expansions. Also do a search on NI knowledge base for product dependencies. Not sure how many expansions you get but its helpful to remember in general that a lot of these things are not stand alone apps but have to be accessed inside a synth eg Massive or Kontakt or Battery something else.

The preview feature certainly helps. Here's the thing that I found quite confusing though - There's Komplete Kontrol hardware (keyboard controllers) and Komplete Kontrol App where you browse all your NI libraries. When you go through any of your products, there's a list of presets down the bottom left, and just clicking on one of them will give you a short sample of that preset. Its very useful to narrow down a particular sound you may be looking for.

You dont need NI hardware to navigate your products whether expansion libraries or other libraries. I don't have any NI hardware, just an old midi keyboard and I can use that for any input when needed for NI stuff, either in standalone mode or as a plugin in my DAW (Logic) and my mouse takes care of the rest.

It's recommended and documented that when you first install / update these products you should open the NI Apps in the Application area, in standalone mode so they can re/scan and update their databases. Failing to do this can cause problems like presets not showing up.