Feedback - Komplete Kontrol 3.0
I'm going to go with complete honestly, because transparent feedback is really important.
The Good:
Looks much nicer, more modern, with better fonts- a lot learned from Kontakt.
The Bad - Usability:
How on earth did you implement the Kontakt Browser, and manage to make even less presets visible?
Why would you have a resizable Kontakt 7 window, but make the KK window fixed - meaning less is visible than before?
In 3.0 you've actually removed features that were present in KK 2.9. The only thing we can now edit, even on our own presets, is tags. This is obviously a design decision, but effectively, it further limits users creating their own libraries.
Could we get an explanation as to why these decisions were made, please?
Comments
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Appreciate the positive, and also the constructive feedback!
Regarding explanations, of course! Here goes:
Preset visibility with regards to resizability:
- You are not alone: this came up in beta too, particularly with regards to M or A series users who don't have the same on-device screen-centric user experience as S MK2 and S MK3.
- WHY NOW?
- By design: more users than not browse on-device (for S MK2, and in tests, for S MK3 too), and so our initial focus was on the keyboard-first experience, where it's quicker for most to bash through a great many sounds.
- Not yet seen, but coming, are efforts to make the browser more semantically searchable, which offer newer and more interesting ways to explore presets. That doesn't really help here, as you're asking about today...
- WHAT NEXT?
- A compromise: we have on our backlog a work package to update to a user experience more similar to that of Kontakt. I cannot promise a delivery timeline, just that it's in the "to be considered" pipeline for all the reasons you mentioned. Resizability in KK is a continued focus from now on, as you've seen.
- What I will say, is that the extreme (and I think bad) example of how this could go is in the non-serious image as posted below. So we're doing our best to be thoughtful about how this shows up if (likely if) and when it does.
A regression in tag editing capabilities
- Again, you are not alone: this came up in beta too.
- WHY NOW?
- By design: it's something we deprioritised for the initial release, but we intend to improve in future. Very very few users actually use this area of the product - many just consume presets as they are. As the new frameworks were introduced, not everything was brought along immediately, even if there are plans to do so with time. Whereupon this affects a small minority of users - it still matters. So...
- WHAT NEXT?
- It's on our backlog, basically. We'll get to it hopefully before too long. Not this year though, as we have higher priority things that must come first.
A note on beta: in the past, we used to do beta sparingly. The team are aiming to get into a more continuous delivery type mode, meaning a lot of the beta requests are continually addressed (if appropriate) over time, rather than delivered occasionally in monolithic drops followed by radio silence. You've touched on two we'd be looking at.
2 -
Not to totally change the subject (we'll bring it back to the topic at hand right)... but I only just noticed "world's biggest Liverpool fan" in your footer.
Sorry to say that I lived in Manchester for many years...
But I'm actually from Hereford, so it's Hereford United all day for me. Not the most illustrious of teams to support, but there you have it.
2 -
Maybe you need 2 applications then? One for devices and one for desktop users. I don't understand why you still can't resize the window like your other apps and why the content browser is now on the bottom and I can't move it. that makes no sense to a desktop user with a monitor in landscape mode. I have an A49 which doesn't have a large screen. This update is even more broken for me.
8 -
Thanks so much for the feedback. Two counter points to that EXCELLENT reason not to have a resizable window.
- You've pointed out that's possible in Kontakt - but I doubt you'll remove the resizing - although I understand your point, I'm not sure why the same codebase was used, but limited for this release - it's a choice over function (IMO). I have 94,000+ presets in factory, and 41,000+ in my user library in KK. I totally get I've got a problem, but the ability to edit, and search via specific things I could add to my own presets was increidbly useful.
- Steinberg did a good job with their mediabay enhancement. If they had previews, and on-device support, I'd probably use that more than KK. However, they don't and won't, so KK is a big part of my workflow. An additional preset window - or expanding (but width-limited) external window would fix this to list presets. This is already done in Maschine in displaying the Plugin - so there are ways to do this within your deisgn philosophy. I'm not trying to be difficult, just honest in feedback.
Finally, Hereford isn't a bad club at all - lots to be proud of there.
4 -
@Matthew_NI can you speak on why the FILES tab is completely missing and also the ability to see both the plain GUI and the browser/presets? Removing theability to drag and drop one shots into battery or the likes of serato sample etc?
4 -
No sample drag n drop? :((((
3 -
Yeah this is why both views need to be openable side by side
1 -
Yeah bummed at the lack of resizing most of all. The “Support for HiDPI” is a bit misleading.
4 -
I can't scroll in the preset menu. It always goes back to the select preset. Is this a bug? How am I supposed to go through presets if I can't scroll through them?
3 -
The shiny new nearly but not quite HiDPI browser is wrapped on screen by a traditional low DPI grainy outer border that includes a grainy Kontrol logo, links back to browser, plugin button etc. Does this mean all content is automatically imbued with 8 bit grainy lo-fi goodness?
2 -
I get that most people don’t make their own presets and do tagging so lack of tools for hobbyists makes some kind of business sense. But the majority of small devs can’t justify the investment given the level of demand for NKS1 so the hobbyists were helping bring more innovative soft synths into the ecosystem. Making NKS2 more open could have established NKS as a more accepted standard. Making it more closed will drive people to consider other hardware/software combos where there is more evidence of innovation in soft synths.
7 -
Further point - Sub Banks are not selectable. Given this was originally an issue with Kontakt 7 that was fixed, I really hope this is something that's rectified in an upcoming release.
I honestly don't understand the regression here. As per the above, it's a choice that takes away user choice and dictates usage.
Given I can search for them (but have to know what they're called) and there is a field for this within the preset, I'm struggling to understand what reason there could be for allowing sub-bank access in one app (Kontakt), and not in another from the same company, when it's highly likely they're utlising the same code-base.
Potential usability bug: Every time you reset the selected plugin, even before loading, the app automatically goes the factory library. Surely it should revert to previous state.
Again, I don't want to come across as moaning/unappreciative, just conveying thoughts.
6 -
One-shot sample drag drop was the biggest reason to use KK for those without the hardware. It's really no reason to use it now over Maschine as a NI sound hub.
1 -
User presets can no longer be deleted from inside KK.
3 -
Not really given so many people depend on those of us who create NKS versions of plugins - that can't happen in KK anymore until this is fixed. Thankfully I still have the old version on my system and Maschine which I will continue to use to build NKS with, but this is not a satisfactory situation and seems to reflect a mindset to take away the tools from users instead of empowering us - forcing us to become consumers of content rather than creators. I feel rather let down that this was even considered a good idea by the powers that be given how much feedback we gave to NI about the importance of making editing more easy, not less.
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