Native Instruments Apple Silicon M1 Compatibility

Kaiwan_NI

Apple began transitioning its Mac lineup from Intel processors to its own Apple silicon M1, their new generation of processors, in late 2020.

While our product team has spent much of last year optimizing Native Instruments products to work with the new processor, the development of an M1-based version is still a work in progress. At the moment, you can run most Native Instruments products in the Rosetta emulation mode. 

We're dedicated to making our current products fully compatible with the new Apple Silicon Macs without having to rely on Rosetta 2 and are excited about the capabilities of this new platform.

Update: All our current products included in KOMPLETE 14 are now compatible with Apple Silicon native M1.

For a list of all products, see https://bit.ly/n1silic

mushanga

Hi…how soon do you anticipate the Apple Silicon native version of Kontakt to be ready for release? Is the current Kontakt beta a native version? Or does it just focus on Monterey compatibility?

Thanks

Matt_NI

mushanga said:

Hi…how soon do you anticipate the Apple Silicon native version of Kontakt to be ready for release? Is the current Kontakt beta a native version? Or does it just focus on Monterey compatibility?

Thanks

Kontakt 6.7 is in Beta already and it does include Apple Silicon compatibility. Hopefully it shouldn't be too long now (probably February) 🙏

mushanga

Matt @ NI said:

mushanga said:

Hi…how soon do you anticipate the Apple Silicon native version of Kontakt to be ready for release? Is the current Kontakt beta a native version? Or does it just focus on Monterey compatibility?

Thanks

Kontakt 6.7 is in Beta already and it does include Apple Silicon compatibility. Hopefully it shouldn't be too long now (probably February) 🙏

Thanks for your reply. By Apple Silicon "compatibility" are you implying that Kontakt 6.7 will run natively or via Rosetta 2?

Kaiwan_NI

Hey @mushanga Kontakt is already working via Rosetta 2, so by Apple Silicon compatibility we mean it will run natively.

mushanga

Kaiwan @ NI said:

Hey @mushanga Kontakt is already working via Rosetta 2, so by Apple Silicon compatibility we mean it will run natively.

Great stuff - that's exciting news! Thanks again

nanotable

Matt @ NI said:

mushanga said:

Hi…how soon do you anticipate the Apple Silicon native version of Kontakt to be ready for release? Is the current Kontakt beta a native version? Or does it just focus on Monterey compatibility?

Thanks

Kontakt 6.7 is in Beta already and it does include Apple Silicon compatibility. Hopefully it shouldn't be too long now (probably February) 🙏

Now, that‘s what I call hard news and useful information Thank you for posting it. 

But why is it tucked away as a reply in a thread? Why not go on the offensive and post a new thread, something along the lines of „Good news, Kontakt is in beta! To be sure, it will take a while to iron out all the bugs, so don’t hold your breath. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel and we wanted you all to know. Cheers!“ I’d love that. 

Personally, I’m eagerly awaiting M1 compability for Reaktor, Massive X and FX like the Crush Pack or Raum. It’d be great to have some sort of overview of what’s in the pipeline, even if it’s just raw info. 

Tony Jones

To be fair there was a call for Kontakt beta testers a few weeks ago, so there was some fuss made!

Matt_NI

@nanotable Just like Tony said but I think also it happened in the middle of a lot of other things. We're trying to summarise where we are at with Silicon at the moment to share more substantial information. We're also revising how we share all these updates on the new community as we speak.
Offensive mode ON for sure 🚀

nanotable

Oh, I’ve missed that call, I’ve just seen the one for Native Access testers.

In any case, this sound promising. I’m looking forward to more substantial information 👍

Tigersharc

Sounds like the timing for new updates will work out perfect for me. I'm currently waiting for the new iMac 27" Pro that will hopefully be officially announced in March. At that point I can use all these plug-in's with no restrictions due to low Ram......

Jeremy_NI

If some of you would like to join the Beta test for Kontakt and try out the M1 native compatible Kontakt, simply like my post and I'll give your emails to the Kontakt team and they will add you to the current Beta test.

👇👇👇👇

mushanga

Can anyone at NI / Kontakt 6.7 beta testers confirm if RAM consumption is any different using the native version? E.g. does a Logic session which required 40GB of RAM in order to run a selection of Kontakt instruments on Intel / Rosetta 2 now require less RAM when run natively on an Apple Silicon machine?

pranaearth

This would have to come from NI, as Beta testers are under an NDA.

anderslink

Just knowing this might happen within the next couple of months is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing this. I would definitely love to assist in testing the beta version and have liked the above comment!

mariuslacatus

I would also like to assist with testing the ARM-native version of Kontakt (I liked the comment above as well). I have a MacBook Pro 13'' M1 16GB.