The Main Control Panel

Reset Size: If KONTAKT PLAYER’s interface becomes too large and you can no longer access the resizing handle to the bottom right of the window, you can use this button to reset KONTAKT PLAYER’s window size.

Show mapping and keyswitches on keyboard: If activated, KONTAKT PLAYER’s virtual On-Screen Keyboard will highlight keys that trigger zones or keyswitches in your currently selected Instrument with different colors. By default, keys that trigger zones are colored blue and those that trigger keyswitches are colored red, however some libraries may deviate from this convention.

Auto-refresh browser: When activated, the Browser will periodically check your file system for changes and pick them up by itself, without requiring you to refresh it manually.

Info Pane Language: Select a language from the drop-down list. If you select Automatic, KONTAKT will use your operating system’s language settings, unless it is unsupported, in which case KONTAKT will use English.

Suppress drawing of unselected groups in mapping editor: This feature is not available in KONTAKT PLAYER.

Default Volume for new instrument and volume reset: This value will be used as a default output volume for new and imported Instruments. Also, it’s the value to which the output volume slider will snap when you [Ctrl]/[Cmd] + click it.

CPU overload protection: High voice counts can make the audio engine overload your CPU during operation; in such cases, the engine can choke and be rendered unusable until you restart it manually via the Restart Engine button in the Engine sub-tab of the Expert tab in the Browser. This scenario can be avoided with the overload protection mechanism, which allows KONTAKT to kill voices when the CPU load gets critical. The Relaxed, Medium, and Strict settings affect how cautious KONTAKT will be about this. Relaxed will not start killing voices until the CPU is very close to overloading, and thus will give you the highest voice count while still providing some protection against overloading; if the CPU load is still too high, try one of the stricter settings.

Multiprocessor support: KONTAKT can make use of multiple CPUs or multi-core processors. To switch multi-processor support on and off, and to set the number of processors/cores you want to use for KONTAKT, select the corresponding entry from the Multiprocessor support menu.

Send MIDI to outside world: This drop-down menu allows you to choose which classes of MIDI events will be sent to KONTAKT PLAYER’s MIDI output port. Click a menu entry to toggle between on (indicated with a small diamond next to the entry) and off state. The available event classes are:

Offline Interpolation Quality: This option allows you to specify an interpolation quality setting for offline bouncing and freezing that’s different from the one specified in the Source Modules of your Instruments. For instance, you might want to keep your Source Modules set to standard in order to save CPU resources during arrangement, but switch to perfect for bounces to get the best possible quality during mixdown. The default setting is like realtime, which will use each Source Module’s HQI setting during offline operation.

Use computer keyboard for MIDI playback: Allows you to use your computer keyboard to trigger MIDI notes for the currently selected Instrument. When activated, the QWERTZ/QWERTY row of letters will play the middle octave.

Keyboard Velocity: Adjusts the velocity of notes that are triggered via your computer keyboard.

Solo Mode: Determines what KONTAKT will do when you attempt to activate the Solo button on more than one Instrument. In Place will only allow one solo Instrument at any time, so any other one will be muted; Latch will let you switch more than one Instrument into solo mode.

Browser: Double-click loads instrument: Enables Instruments to be added into the Rack by double-clicking on their names in the Browse.

Browser: Show files before folders: Determines the order in which files and folders will be listed in the lower pane of the Browser.

Default root-key for new zones: Specifies the root key for new Zones, if they are created from Samples with no embedded pitch information. The Zones will be generated with the root key specified here.

MIDI channel assignment for loaded patches: Opens a drop-down menu that allows you to switch between two different modes that determine the way in which KONTAKT PLAYER will assign MIDI channels to newly added Instruments:

Enable undo: Enables the ability to undo actions, when the checkbox is selected. However, this can be quite resource intensive, especially with larger instruments, so by default this setting is unselected.

External wave editor: This featureis not available in KONTAKT PLAYER. This setting allows you to specify your own preferred sample editor. When you click the Ext. Editor button in the Wave Editor, KONTAKT will start the specified editor with the current sample, and automatically pick up the changes when you save the Sample within that editor.

Yes, enable usage data tracking: Selects the option to track and send usage data.

No, I don’t want to contribute: Selects the option to turn off data tracking.

Merge new Multi with the existing one: Enables a new Multi to be merged with the current Multi when loaded. If unselected, the current Multi will be discarded when a new Multi is loaded. KONTAKT will not make a check and the current Multi will be replaced instantly.

Load samples in background: Enables KONTAKT to load instruments created in KONTAKT 4.1 or later in the background. This feature is useful for instruments that use a large amount of samples and take a long time to load. With background loading active, KONTAKT will display the instrument’s interface and become playable as soon as possible. Certain keys may not sound immediately if the samples have yet to be loaded into memory.

Convert 3rd party samples to WAV when saving: Enables KONTAKT to save REX Samples used by third-party Instruments in WAV format. When unselected they will be saved in their native format.

Unwind automation IDs for additionally loaded patches: Enables KONTAKT to re-assign automation IDs of newly loaded Instruments if there is already an Instrument in your Multi that uses the same IDs. As an example, if would like to add an Instrument twice to your Multi, which uses automation IDs 0 through 9; if this option is activated, KONTAKT will change the assigned IDs of the second Instrument to 10-19 on load, provided that these IDs have not been used by other Instruments in your Multi yet.

Non-Player content base path: Allows you to specify a base path for your Non-Player content. The option to store referenced paths relative to the base path is provided in the checkbox below. An option to use the path on Save is available and deactivated by default.

Store paths referenced in host projects relative to Non-Player content base path: Determines if referenced paths are stored relative to the base path, or as subpaths. When selected, this option minimizes the occurrence of missing content when using KONTAKT as a plug-in in a host DAW. When a host project is saved, Non-Player content will be able to resolve without the Missing Content dialog, if the libraries are located on the computer’s path as defined in the base path field.

Automatically add loaded / saved files to database: When activated, KONTAKT will automatically add any files that you access to the Database if they’re not already included. This helps keeping your Database up to date without the need for manual rebuilds.

Include samples in database scan: If activated, KONTAKT will include information about individual Samples (i.e. audio files) in the Database when scanning your file system for objects. This can be useful when you’re frequently creating and editing your own Instruments; otherwise, it’s not advisable to enable this option, as it can massively increase the size your Database.

Database Location List: Here you can specify locations that should be covered by the Database, such as the directory or partition that contains your sample libraries.

Hide Library: Uncheck the entry in the list to hide a library from the Libraries tab of the Browser without uninstalling it from your computer,

Show Library: Check an entry in the list to show a library in the Libraries tab of the Browser.

Override Instrument’s preload size: If activated, KONTAKT will ignore the preload buffer size that’s embedded in Instrument files since KONTAKT 2, and use the specified buffer size instead. We recommend leaving the preload buffer size on default value. Memory improvements might be possible by moving the slider to the lowest setting possible without experiencing playback errors.

Automatic: In Automatic mode the KMS will keep all samples currently used by KONTAKT instances stored. If an Instrument is removed from KONTAKT’s rack, samples that are no longer needed will be also removed from the Memory Server’s sample pool. The KMS will automatically shut down when all KONTAKT instances are closed.

Manual: In Manual mode the KONTAKT Memory Server does not remove samples from the server when an instrument is removed from KONTAKT’s rack or when all KONTAKT instances are closed. All samples stay in the memory as long as it is running. This can be helpful, e.g. when re-opening a project in your host sequencer which is using KONTAKT as plug-in and when working with extensive templates of numerous instruments. Loading times are significantly shorter, since the samples are already stored in RAM and do not need to be loaded again.